DUE ON MONDAY 27th by 8amPersonal Travel Strategy statement .docx

DUE ON MONDAY 27th by 8am
Personal Travel Strategy statement: In addition to working with
the group to design an alternative tour and make the group
presentation, each of you will be expected to pull together the
things you've learned in this course into what might be called
your "personal travel strategy." This should involve both a
philosophy of what goals and objectives you want your travel to
achieve and a set of strategies you intend to employ to
accomplish them. While I expect your goals and objectives to
reflect in part the subject of the last several weeks in the
course--issues of responsibility and impact on the one hand, and
the question of how to get the most out of your travel on the
other--I expect you to review the course as a whole for further
inspiration and guidance. Please keep in mind that your paper
should accomplish two things: 1) Lay out a thoughtful and
coherent personal travel strategy, and 2) Demonstrate your
mastery of the relevant readings and your ability to adapt their
insights into your own conceptual framework and thinking.
I’ll expect undergraduate students to write a Personal Travel
Strategy statement that is 2 double-spaced pages (1
inch margins, 12 point font) in length; graduate students’
statements should be 4-5 pages in length.
I visited/went to “AVERY ISLAND, LOUSIANA” TABASCO
PEPPER SAUCE.
SAN FRANISCO PLANTATION in Louisiana.
It’s basically a letter to your future self to tell u how to travel
and include things u learnt from where you visited.
Your responsibility as a traveler
How to make sure you enjoy yourself

The Aeneid and The Divine Comedy
The labyrinth of initiation, the underworld, and the sacred grove
Publius Vergilius Maro
70 – 21 BCE
Virgil was regarded by the Romans as their greatest poet.
His influence on Dante and Western literature, like that
of Ovid, is profound. The Aeneid is his most famous work
and became Rome’s national epic.
The son of a farmer in northern Italy, Virgil came to be
regarded as one of Rome's greatest poets. Virgil devoted
his life life to poetry and to studies connected with it. He
never married, and the first half of his life was that of a
scholar and near recluse. But, as his poetry won him
fame, he gradually won the friendship of many important
men in the Roman world.
(adapted from Encyclopedia Britannica and poetry
foundation.org)

Dante Alighieri
1265 – 1321 CE
Dante Alighieri was born in Florence, Italy to a notable family
of modest
means. His mother died when he was seven years old, and his
father
remarried, having two more children.
Dante was never married to his “Beatrice.” They met twice, at a
nine
year interval (although it might be a symbolic time period).
They were
both married to other people, and she died at 25. But he
continued to
write about throughout his life. We consider his love for her to
be a
type of “courtly love.” It is otherworldly and has a spiritual
aspect.
His most famous work is the Divine Comedy. The story begins
when he
finds himself lost in a woods in middle age. Virgil finds him
and leads
him through hell and purgatory. Beatrice is his guide in
Paradise.

(adapted from poets.)
Dante is very important to western literature.
T. S. Eliot claimed:
Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them, there is
no third.
And Virgil is very important to Dante.
Dante, addressing Virgil in Canto 1 of the Divine Comedy:
Thou art my master.
We will start with The Aeneid.
Who is Aeneas?
There are multiple myths about the founding of Rome. One very
important one is told in The Aeneas, the story of a Trojan prince
who
brought together the survivors from Troy. They boarded ships
and
sailed in search of a new home. The Aeneid tells their story,
focused
of course on their leader.

As The Aeneid opens, Aeneas and the Trojans come to
Carthage,
where he falls in love with the Queen Dido. His bliss is short
lived, as
he is told by the gods that he must leave her. Our reading, Book
6,
comes half way through the story. Aeneas’s father has died
along the
way, and Aeneas wants to see him. To do that, he must descend
into
the underworld—and come back. Very few have ever made the
round
trip journey. He is guided by the priestess of Apollo.
The Temple of Apollo built by Daedalus.
Book 6 of The Aeneid gives an elaborate description of
how Daedalus had depicted the story of Theseus, the
minotaur, Ariadne, and his escape from Crete on the
doors.
Aeneas must go through these doors, get advice from
the Sybil, enter the wood sacred to Persephone and
Diana, find the Golden Bough and make it all the way
to Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, give her the
Golden Bough and get her permission to see his father.
And then he has to make it back to the upper world.

The Sybil—
Prophetess and guide
“son of Trojan Anchises, easy is
the descent to Avernus: night and
day the door of gloomy Dis stands
open; but to recall one’s steps and
pass out to the upper air, this is
the task, this the toil! ”
Diana (trivia) Persephone Hecate
all three of these goddesses are mentioned in Book 6
All three of these goddesses are associated in Book 6 with a/the
sacred wood:
Diana: “But Aeneas the True made his way to the fastness
where Apollo rules
enthroned on high.and to the vast cavern beyond, which is the
Sibyl’s own
secluded place; here the prophetic Delian god [Apollo] breathes
into her the
spirits visionary might, revealing things to come. They were
already drawing
near to Diana’s Wood and to the golden temple there.”

Hecate: Aeneas to the Sibyl,“. . . not without reason did Hecate
appoint you to
be mistress over the forest of Avernus [where the Golden Bough
is found].”
Persephone: “Hiding in a tree’s thick shade there is a bough,
and it is golden,
with both leaves and pliant stem of gold. It is dedicated as
sacred to Juno of
the Lower World [Persephone]. All the forest gives it
protection, and it is
enclosed by shadows in a valley of little light.”
These two statues depict Diana as well in
her Diana of Ephesus version. We used to
think she just had an odd bosum to indicate
her significance as a fertility deity.
New theories (1979) are that she is
decorated with the body parts of sacrificed
bulls. Given the images of bulls (and bees)
on the statue this seems very plausible to

me, especially since bulls and bees were
also important in the myth of the minotaur
of the iconography (images and symbols) of
Crete.
So . . . Aeneas goes to Apollo’s temple, with its
depiction of the story of the labyrinth, Minotaur,
Theseus etc. The temple is located in Diana’s
wood, which is also the forest of Avernus and the
sacred grove of Persephone.
He must enter that wood and find the Golden
Bough, pluck it, descend to the Underworld, and
give the bough to Persephone. Then, hopefully he
can see his father and return from the Underworld
with new knowledge. In ancient mythology, a
descent and return to the Underworld symbolized
a type of initiation.
If you can make the round trip journey, you return
wiser and triumphant. Threading through the
labyrinth is in many ways a symbolically similar
journey, and this is likely one of the reasons that
the labyrinth story is depicted on Apollo’s temple
and relayed by Virgil.
When Aeneas enters the wood, he sees two doves
who lead him to the Golden Bough.

Doves are a symbol of Aphrodite (Venus) who is
the mother of Aeneas. A dove was also released
by Noah to see if there was dry land. It came back
with an olive twig in its mouth. And, of course, the
dove is also the symbol of the Holy Spirit who
guides Christians.
Aeneas and the Sibyl go to the Underworld
Just before the entrance, even within the very jaws of Hell,
Grief and avenging Cares have set their bed;
there pale Diseases dwell, sad Age, and Fear, and Hunger,
temptress to sin, and loathly Want, shapes
terrible to view; and Death and Distress; next, Death’s own
brother Sleep, and the soul’s Guilty Joys, and,
on the threshold opposite, the death-dealing War, and the
Furies’ iron cells, and maddening Strife, her
snaky locks entwined with bloody ribbons.
In the midst an elm, shadowy and vast, spreads her boughs and
aged arms, the home which, men say,
false Dreams hold, clinging under every leaf. And many
monstrous forms besides of various beasts are
stalled at the doors, Centaurs and double-shaped Scyllas, and he
hundredfold Briareus, and the beast of
Lerna, hissing horribly, and the Chimaera armed with flame,
Gorgons and Harpies, and the shape of the
three-bodied shade [Geryon]. Here on a sudden, in trembling
terror, Aeneas grasps his sword, and turns
the naked edge against their coming; and did not his wise

companion warn him that these were but faint,
bodiless lives, flitting under a hollow semblance of form, he
would rush upon them and vainly cleave
shadows with steel.
From here a road leads to the waters of Tartarean Acheron.
Here, thick with mire and of fathomless
flood, a whirlpool seethes and belches into Cocytus all its sand.
On the left: One of
Piranesci’s (1720–1778)
imaginary prison
etchings. Keep in mind
that the Underworld is a
prison, like the labyrinth
on Crete which held
first the Minotaur and
then Daedalus.
Remember Harry Potter and the
Philosopher’s Stone?
These realms huge Cerberus makes
ring with his triple-throated baying,
his monstrous bulk crouching in a
cavern opposite. To him, seeing the
snakes now bristling on his necks,
the seer flung a morsel drowsy
with honey and drugged meal. He,
opening his triple throat in
ravenous hunger, catches it when
thrown and, with monstrous frame

relaxed, sinks to earth and
stretches his bulk over all the den.
The warder buried in sleep, Aeneas
wins the entrance, and swiftly
leaves the bank of that stream
whence none return.
Aeneas meets his “Mal” in the Underworld
. . . the Mourning Fields; such is the name they bear.
Here those whom stern Love has consumed with cruel
wasting are hidden in walks withdrawn, embowered in a
myrtle grove; even in death the pangs leave them not.
“Unhappy Dido! Was the tale true then that came to
me, that you were dead and had sought your doom with
the sword? Was I, alas! the cause of your death? By the
stars I swear, by the world above, and whatever is
sacred in the grave below, unwillingly, queen, I parted
from your shores. . . . Stay your step and withdraw not
from our view. Whom do you flee? This is the last word
Fate suffers me to say to you.” . . .She, turning away,
kept her looks fixed on the ground and no more
changes her countenance as he essays to speak than if
she were set in hard flint or Marpesian rock. At length
she flung herself away and, still his foe, fled back to the
shady grove, where Sychaeus, her lord of former days,
responds to her sorrows and gives her love for love.
Minos, Judge of the Underworld.
Here is another connection

between the labyrinth story and
the underworld. Both Aeneas and
Dante encounter Minos on their
journeys through hell.
She ended, and, advancing side by side along the dusky way,
they
haste over the mid-space and draw near the doors. Aeneas wins
the entrance, sprinkles his body with fresh water, and plants the
bough full on the threshold.
This at length performed and the task of the goddess fulfilled,
they came to a land of joy, the pleasant lawns and happy seats
of
the Blissful Groves.
.
Aeneas has a long conversation with Anchises, who can now see
the future and tells him about his
descendants and the great civilization, Rome, that he will found.
A couple of interesting points at the end:
Reincarnation:
All these that you see, when they have rolled time’s wheel
through a thousand years, the god
summons in vast throng to Lethe’s river, so that, their memories
effaced, they may once more revisit
the vault above and conceive the desire of return to the body.”
Anchises also tells Aeneas that all of

life is part of a universal intelligence,
And then the curious (and rather abrupt) end:
Two gates of Sleep there are, whereof the one, they say, is horn
and offers a ready exit to true
shades, the other shining with the sheen of polished ivory, but
delusive dreams issue upward through
it from the world below. Thither Anchises, discoursing thus,
escorts his son and with him the Sibyl,
and sends them forth by the ivory gate: Aeneas speeds his way
to the ships and rejoins his comrades;
then straight along the shore he sails for Caieta’s haven.
The Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy is
divided into three
main sections, the
inferno, purgatory and
paradise.
The final rhyme for
each section is stelle,
or the word star . . .
INFERNO I
Introduction to the Divine Comedy;
The Wood and the Mountain
How does Dante begin his story?
When half way through the journey of our life

I found that I was in a gloomy wood,
because the path which led aright was lost.
And ah, how hard it is to say just what
this wild and rough and stubborn woodland was,
the very thought of which renews my fear!
So bitter ’t is, that death is little worse;
but of the good to treat which there I found,
I ’ll speak of what I else discovered there.
I cannot well say how I entered it,
so full of slumber was I at the moment
when I forsook the pathway of the truth;
This passage should also put you in mind of the
verse in the gospel of Matthew “for the gate is
narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and
those who find it are few.” Dante isn’t just
physically lost—he is spiritually lost.
The word that is translated as “narrow” here is
translated as “straight” in the King James
version—for us, straight means without bend or
curve, but straight also used to mean narrow.
Essentially the message is that the path to
salvation or enlightenment is difficult and, like
the path through a maze, it is hard to find.
In the middle of his life (midlife crisis, anyone?), he’s lost the
“straight way” and found himself in a “gloomy forest.” He
doesn’t remember how he got there—he was “full of
slumber”—like Cobb, in a dream. This line also evokes the
end of the Aeneid chapter 6.

It also recalls the wood of Avernus which occupy the “mid
space” between the world and Hades’ realm in The Aeneid.
Chapter 6 is the “mid-point” of the Aeneid.
He sees the sun on the mountain, and is
comforted:
. . . after I had reached a mountain’s foot,
where that vale ended which had pierced my
heart
with fear, I looked on high,
and saw its shoulders
mantled already with that planet’s rays
which leadeth one aright o’er every path.
Then quieted a little was the fear,
which in the lake-depths of my heart had lasted
throughout the night I passed so piteously.[[5]]
And even as he who, from the deep emerged
with sorely troubled breath upon the shore,
turns round, and gazes at the dangerous water;
even so my mind, which still was fleeing on,
turned back to look again upon the pass
which ne’er permitted any one to live.
Until he sees the beasts.
He is bewildered and terrified. He sees a lion, a
leopard and a she-wolf. These ravenous beasts
might remind you of the Minotaur—and, perhaps,
the three headed dog of hell, Cerberus. They are
also, arguably, a type of unholy trinity. They
could be seen as lust or fraud (the spotted

leopard), pride/ambition and violence (the lion)
and avarice/greed (she-wolf), which correspond
to areas or categories of the Inferno.
There is also a reference to the Bible: Jeremiah
5:6 reads, "Wherefore a lion out of the forest
shall slay them, and a wolf of the evenings shall
spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities:
everyone that goeth out thence shall be torn into
pieces: because their transgressions are many
and their backslidings are increased."
He tries to make his way to and up the mountain,
but the leopard and the other beasts block his way:
. . . she so hindered my advance,
that more than once I turned me to go back.
Some time had now from early morn elapsed,
and with those very stars the sun was rising
that in his escort were, when Love Divine
in the beginning moved those beauteous things; . . .
Here he references the creation of the world when
the stars sang, and this reference ties the beginning
of the Divine Comedy to the end.
The East is the direction of the rising sun, and has
significance spiritually.
Dante sees Virgil, recognizes and praises him, and begs
for his help. Virgil replies:

“A different course from this must thou pursue,”
he answered, when he saw me shedding tears,
“if from this wilderness thou wouldst escape;
for this wild beast, on whose account thou criest,
alloweth none to pass along her way, . . .
I therefore think and judge it best for thee
to follow me; and I shall be thy guide,
and lead thee hence through an eternal place,
where thou shalt hear the shrieks of hopelessness
of those tormented spirits of old times,
each one of whom bewails the second death;
Virgil tells him that after he has lead him as far as he
can, he will turn Dante over to a worthier guide.
INFERNO II
Introduction to the Inferno | The Mission of Virgil
At first Dante says yes!, but then he vascillates:
First response: Let’s Go!
. . . conduct me thither where thou saidst just now,
that I may see Saint Peter’s Gate, and those
whom thou describest as so whelmed with woe.
On second thought: Well, I’m not so sure . . .
I ’m not Aeneas, nor yet Paul am I;
me worthy of this, nor I nor others deem.
If, therefore, I consent to come, I fear
lest foolish be my coming; thou art wise,
and canst much better judge than I can talk.”
And such as he who unwills what he willed,
and changes so his purpose through new thoughts,

that what he had begun he wholly leaves;
such on that gloomy slope did I become.
This vascillation is a literary reflection of the winding
path of the psychological labyrinth of error and sin. It
also references a verse in the book of James: “A double-
minded man is unstable in all his ways.”
Virgil tells him he has been sent by Beatrice, St.
Lucia and the Virgin Mary. Then he takes him on a
tour of hell and purgatory.
“ . . . a friend of mine, but not a friend of Fortune,*
is on his journey o’er the lonely slope
obstructed so, that he hath turned through fear;
and, from what I have heard of him in Heaven,
I fear lest he may now have strayed so far,
that I have risen too late to give him help.
Bestir thee, then, and with thy finished speech,
and with whatever his escape may need,
assist him so that I may be consoled.
I, who now have thee go, am Beatrice;
thence come I, whither I would fain return;
’t was love that moved me, love that makes me
speak.
This love is an idealized, spiritual love.
*by this she means that he is not lucky. But Fortune or Fortuna
is also a Roman goddess, and this has a more nuanced meaning
as well. Fortune and fate are two different things. Your fate is,
essentially, the destination. Fortune turns like a wheel.

INFERNO III
The Gate and Vestibule of Hell. Cowards and
Neutrals. Acheron
Through me one goes into the town of woe,
through me one goes into eternal pain,
through me among the people that are lost.
. . . all hope abandon, ye that enter here!
These words of gloomy color I beheld
inscribed upon the summit of a gate;
whence I: “Their meaning, Teacher, troubles me.”
. . . Then, after he had placed his hand in mine
with cheerful face, whence I was comforted,
he led me in among the hidden things.
At the left is one version (perhaps the first) of
Rodin’s Gates of Hell—which was inspired by Dante.
The famous thinker sits above the gate, paralyzed
by indecision. Different figures represent persons
and creatures that Dante meets in hell.
Botticelli’s
illustration for the
9 circles of hell.
1. Limbo
2. Lust
3. Gluttony
4. Greed
5. Anger
6. Heresy
7. Violence
8. Fraud

9. Treachery
Crossing the Acheron
As with Aeneas, Charon is reluctant to convey the living Dante
across the river of death. Virgil explains that this is because
Dante,
being essentially good, does not belong in hell:
“My son,” the courteous Teacher said to me,
“all those that perish in the wrath of God
from every country come together here;
and eager are to pass across the stream,
because Justice Divine so spurs them on,
that what was fear is turned into desire.
A good soul never goes across from hence;
if Charon, therefore, findeth fault with thee,
well canst thou now know what his words imply.”
They pass by the neutrals and the damned, ride with Charon,
and
on reaching the other side, Dante essentially faints:
“The tear-stained ground
gave forth a wind, whence flashed vermilion light
which in me overcame all consciousness;
and down I fell like one whom sleep o’ertakes.”
INFERNO IV
The First Circle. The Borderland
Unbaptized Worthies. Illustrious Pagans

So dark it was, so deep and full of mist,
that, howsoe’er I gazed into its depths,
nothing at all did I discern therein.
“Into this blind world let us now descend!
. . .
Thus he set forth, and thus he had me enter
the first of circles girding the abyss.
Therein, as far as one could judge by list’ning,
there was no lamentation, saving sighs
which caused a trembling in the eternal air;
and this came from the grief devoid of torture
felt by the throngs, which many were and great,
of infants and of women and of men.”
To me then my good Teacher: “Dost not ask
what spirits these are whom thou seest here?
Now I would have thee know, ere thou go
further,
that these sinned not; and though they merits
have,
’t is not enough, for they did not have baptism,
the gateway of the creed believed by thee;
and if before Christianity they lived,
they did not with due worship honor God;
and one of such as these am I myself.
For such defects, and for no other guilt,
we ’re lost, and only hurt to this extent,
that, in desire, we live deprived of hope.”
Where the illustrious pagans dwell in limbo:

We reached a noble Castle’s foot, seven times
encircled by high walls, and all around
defended by a lovely little stream.
This last we crossed as if dry land it were;
through seven gates with these sages I went in,
and to a meadow of fresh grass we came.
The Harrowing of Hell
“Tell me, my Teacher, tell me, thou my Lord,”
I then began, through wishing to be sure
about the faith which conquers every error;
“came any ever, by his own deserts,
or by another’s, hence, who then was blest?”
Virgil tells him of Christ’s saving the
patriarchs—Adam, Abel, Moses, Noah,
Abraham, Rachel, King David and many
others.
INFERNO V
The Second Circle. Sexual Intemperance
The Lascivious and Adulterers
Hell proper starts here. Minos, who is given a
serpent’s tail by Dante, judges the damned:
thereupon that Connoisseur of sins
perceives what place in Hell belongs to it,
and girds him with his tail as many times,

as are the grades he wishes it sent down.
Before him there are always many standing;
they go to judgment, each one in his turn;
they speak and hear, and then are downward
hurled.
The lustful are essentially caught up in a whirling
tornado that is the “poetic justice” for their lack
of self control. They are whirled around and
dashed against rocks.
Here Dante speaks with Paolo and Francesco,
lovers who were tempted to adultery by reading
a romance—the story of Launcelot and
Guinevere. Paolo was the brother of Francesca’s
husband, who murdered them and will be found
deeper in hell.
Dante also sees Dido, who killed herself for love
of Aeneas:
“The next is she who killed herself through love,
and to Sichaeus’ ashes broke her faith; . . . “
At the end of the fifth canto, Dante faints:
out of sympathy
I swooned away as though about to die,
and fell as falls a body that is dead
INFERNO VI
The Third Circle. Intemperance in Food
Gluttons

In the third circle am I, that of rain
eternal, cursèd, cold and burdensome;
its measure and quality are never new.
The Labyrinth of Initiation, the sacred grove
and the Under/After World p. 42
Coarse hail, and snow, and dirty-colored water
through the dark air are ever pouring down;
and foully smells the ground receiving them.
A wild beast, Cerberus, uncouth and cruel,
is barking with three throats, as would a dog,
over the people that are there submerged.
Red eyes he hath, a dark and greasy beard,
a belly big, and talons on his hands;
he claws the spirits, flays and quarters them.
My Leader then stretched out his opened
palms,
and took some earth, and with his fists well
filled,
he threw it down into the greedy throats.
And like a dog that, barking, yearns for food,
and, when he comes to bite it, is appeased,
since only to devour it doth he strain
and fight;
“These torments, Teacher,
after the Final Sentence will they grow,
or less become, or burn the same as now.”
And he to me: “Return thou to thy science,
which holdeth that the more a thing is perfect,

so much the more it feels of weal or woe.
Although this cursèd folk shall nevermore
arrive at true perfection, it expects
to be more perfect after, than before.”
As in a circle, round that road we went,
speaking at greater length than I repeat,
and came unto a place where one descends;
there found we Plutus, the great enemy.
Dante reflects:
Dis and the City of Dis are mentioned in The
Aeneid and Dante’s Inferno. Essentially, this is the
Father of the Underworld, and you can picture
Pluto or Hades.
Lower Hell, inside the walls of Dis, in an
illustration by Stradanus. There is a drop from the
sixth circle to the three rings of the seventh circle,
then again to the ten rings of the eighth circle,
and, at the bottom, to the icy ninth circle.
Dante emphasizes the city aspect of Dis by
describing its architectural features: towers, gates,
walls, ramparts, bridges, and moats. Dis is an
antithesis to the heavenly city or Jerusalem.
Dante’s “City of Dis” is quite convoluted (literally).
INFERNO XII
The Seventh Circle. The First Ring. Violence
against one’s Fellow Man.

“. . . on the border of the broken bank
was stretched at length the Infamy of Crete,
who in the seeming heifer was conceived;
and when he saw us there he bit himself,
like one whom inward anger overcomes.
In his direction then my Sage cried out:
“Dost thou, perhaps, think Athens’ duke is here,
who gave thee death when in the world above?
Begone, thou beast! for this man cometh not
taught by thy sister, but is going by,
in order to behold your punishments.”
INFERNO XXXIV
The Ninth Circle. Treachery. Cocytus
Traitors to their Benefactors. Lucifer
. . . Raising mine eyes, I thought that I should still
see Lucifer the same as when I left him;
but I beheld him with his legs held up.
And thereupon, if I became perplexed,
let those dull people think, who do not see
what kind of point that was which I had passed.
“Stand up” my Teacher said, “upon thy feet!
the way is long and difficult the road,
and now to middle-tierce the sun returns.”
It was no palace hallway where we were,
but just a natural passage under ground,
which had a wretched floor and lack of light.

Where is the ice? And how is this one fixed
thus upside down? And in so short a time
how hath the sun from evening crossed to morn?”
Then he to me: “Thou thinkest thou art still
beyond the center where I seized the hair
of that bad Worm who perforates the world.
While I was going down, thou wast beyond it;
but when I turned, thou then didst pass the point
to which all weights are drawn on every side;
thou now art come beneath the hemisphere
opposed to that the great dry land o’ercovers,
and ’neath whose zenith was destroyed the Man,
who without sinfulness was born and died;
thy feet thou hast upon the little sphere,
which forms the other surface of Judecca.
There is a place down there, as far removed
from Beelzebub, as e’er his tomb extends,
not known by sight, but by a brooklet’s sound,
which flows down through a hole there in the rock,
gnawed in it by the water’s spiral course,
which slightly slopes. My Leader then, and I,
in order to regain the world of light,
entered upon that dark and hidden path;
and, without caring for repose, went up,
he going on ahead, and I behind,
till through a rounded opening I beheld
some of the lovely things the sky contains;
thence we came out, and saw again the stars.
PARADISO XXXIII
The Empyrean. GOD. St. Bernard’s Prayer to Mary

The Vision of God. Ultimate Salvation
“O Virgin Mother, Daughter of thy Son,
humbler and loftier than any creature,
eternal counsel’s predetermined goal,
thou art the one that such nobility
didst lend to human nature, that its Maker
scorned not to make Himself what He had made.
Within thy womb rekindled was the Love,
through whose warm influence in the eternal Peace
this Flower hath blossomed thus.”
St. Bernard prays for Dante:
Now doth this man, who from the lowest drain
of the Universe hath one by one beheld,
as far as here, the forms of spirit-life,
beseech thee, of thy grace, for so much strength
that with his eyes he may uplift himself
toward Ultimate Salvation higher still.
Dante does his best to remember his vision;
And such as he, who seeth in a dream,
and after it, the imprinted feeling stays,
while all the rest returns not to his mind;
even such am I; for almost wholly fades
my vision, yet the sweetness which was born
of it is dripping still into my heart.
Even thus the snow is in the sun dissolved;
even thus the Sibyl’s oracles, inscribed
on flying leaves, were lost adown the wind.

O the abundant Grace, whereby I dared
to pierce the Light Eternal with my gaze,
until I had therein exhausted sight!
I saw that far within its depths there lies,
by Love together in one volume bound,
that which in leaves lies scattered through the world;
substance and accident, and modes thereof,
fused, as it were, in such a way, that that,
whereof I speak, is but One Simple Light.
Within the Lofty Light’s profound and clear
subsistence there appeared to me three Rings,
of threefold color and of one content;
and one, as Rainbow is by Rainbow, seemed
reflected by the other, while the third
seemed like a Fire breathed equally from both.
. . . O Light Eternal, that alone dost dwell
within Thyself, alone dost understand
Thyself, and love and smile upon Thyself,
Self-understanding and Self-understood!
That Circle which …
MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
ACT I
SCENE I. Athens. The palace of THESEUS.
Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, and
Attendants
THESEUS
Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour

Draws on apace; four happy days bring in
Another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow
This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame or a dowager
Long withering out a young man’s revenue.
HIPPOLYTA
Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;
Four nights will quickly dream away the time;
And then the moon, like to a silver bow
New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night
Of our solemnities.
THESEUS
Go, Philostrate,
Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments;
Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth;
Turn melancholy forth to funerals;
The pale companion is not for our pomp.
Exit PHILOSTRATE
Hippolyta, I woo’d thee with my sword,
And won thy love, doing thee injuries;
But I will wed thee in another key,
With pomp, with triumph and with revelling.
Enter EGEUS, HERMIA, LYSANDER, and DEMETRIUS
EGEUS
Happy be Theseus, our renowned duke!
THESEUS
Thanks, good Egeus: what’s the news with thee?

EGEUS
Full of vexation come I, with complaint
Against my child, my daughter Hermia.
Stand forth, Demetrius. My noble lord,
This man hath my consent to marry her.
Stand forth, Lysander: and my gracious duke,
This man hath bewitch’d the bosom of my child;
Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes,
And interchanged love-tokens with my child:
Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung,
With feigning voice verses of feigning love,
And stolen the impression of her fantasy
With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds, conceits,
Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats, messengers
Of strong prevailment in unharden’d youth:
With cunning hast thou filch’d my daughter’s heart,
Turn’d her obedience, which is due to me,
To stubborn harshness: and, my gracious duke,
Be it so she; will not here before your grace
Consent to marry with Demetrius,
I beg the ancient privilege of Athens,
As she is mine, I may dispose of her:
Which shall be either to this gentleman
Or to her death, according to our law
Immediately provided in that case.
THESEUS
What say you, Hermia? be advised fair maid:
To you your father should be as a god;
One that composed your beauties, yea, and one
To whom you are but as a form in wax
By him imprinted and within his power

To leave the figure or disfigure it.
Demetrius is a worthy gentleman.
HERMIA
So is Lysander.
THESEUS
In himself he is;
But in this kind, wanting your father’s voice,
The other must be held the worthier.
HERMIA
I would my father look’d but with my eyes.
THESEUS
Rather your eyes must with his judgment look.
HERMIA
I do entreat your grace to pardon me.
I know not by what power I am made bold,
Nor how it may concern my modesty,
In such a presence here to plead my thoughts;
But I beseech your grace that I may know
The worst that may befall me in this case,
If I refuse to wed Demetrius.
THESEUS
Either to die the death or to abjure
For ever the society of men.
Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires;
Know of your youth, examine well your blood,
Whether, if you yield not to your father’s choice,
You can endure the livery of a nun,
For aye to be in shady cloister mew’d,
To live a barren sister all your life,
Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.

Thrice-blessed they that master so their blood,
To undergo such maiden pilgrimage;
But earthlier happy is the rose distill’d,
Than that which withering on the virgin thorn
Grows, lives and dies in single blessedness.
HERMIA
So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord,
Ere I will my virgin patent up
Unto his lordship, whose unwished yoke
My soul consents not to give sovereignty.
THESEUS
Take time to pause; and, by the next new moon--
The sealing-day betwixt my love and me,
For everlasting bond of fellowship--
Upon that day either prepare to die
For disobedience to your father’s will,
Or else to wed Demetrius, as he would;
Or on Diana’s altar to protest
For aye austerity and single life.
DEMETRIUS
Relent, sweet Hermia: and, Lysander, yield
Thy crazed title to my certain right.
LYSANDER
You have her father’s love, Demetrius;
Let me have Hermia’s: do you marry him.
EGEUS
Scornful Lysander! true, he hath my love,
And what is mine my love shall render him.

And she is mine, and all my right of her
I do estate unto Demetrius.
LYSANDER
I am, my lord, as well derived as he,
As well possess’d; my love is more than his;
My fortunes every way as fairly rank’d,
If not with vantage, as Demetrius’;
And, which is more than all these boasts can be,
I am beloved of beauteous Hermia:
Why should not I then prosecute my right?
Demetrius, I’ll avouch it to his head,
Made love to Nedar’s daughter, Helena,
And won her soul; and she, sweet lady, dotes,
Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry,
Upon this spotted and inconstant man.
THESEUS
I must confess that I have heard so much,
And with Demetrius thought to have spoke thereof;
But, being over-full of self-affairs,
My mind did lose it. But, Demetrius, come;
And come, Egeus; you shall go with me,
I have some private schooling for you both.
For you, fair Hermia, look you arm yourself
To fit your fancies to your father’s will;
Or else the law of Athens yields you up--
Which by no means we may extenuate--
To death, or to a vow of single life.
Come, my Hippolyta: what cheer, my love?
Demetrius and Egeus, go along:
I must employ you in some business
Against our nuptial and confer with you

Of something nearly that concerns yourselves.
EGEUS
With duty and desire we follow you.
Exeunt all but LYSANDER and HERMIA
LYSANDER
How now, my love! why is your cheek so pale?
How chance the roses there do fade so fast?
HERMIA
Belike for want of rain, which I could well
Beteem them from the tempest of my eyes.
LYSANDER
Ay me! for aught that I could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth;
But, either it was different in blood,--
HERMIA
O cross! too high to be enthrall’d to low.
LYSANDER
Or else misgraffed in respect of years,--
HERMIA
O spite! too old to be engaged to young.
LYSANDER
Or else it stood upon the choice of friends,--
HERMIA

O hell! to choose love by another’s eyes.
LYSANDER
Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,
War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,
Making it momentany as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say ‘Behold!’
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.
HERMIA
If then true lovers have been ever cross’d,
It stands as an edict in destiny:
Then let us teach our trial patience,
Because it is a customary cross,
As due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs,
Wishes and tears, poor fancy’s followers.
LYSANDER
A good persuasion: therefore, hear me, Hermia.
I have a widow aunt, a dowager
Of great revenue, and she hath no child:
From Athens is her house remote seven leagues;
And she respects me as her only son.
There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee;
And to that place the sharp Athenian law
Cannot pursue us. If thou lovest me then,
Steal forth thy father’s house to-morrow night;
And in the wood, a league without the town,
Where I did meet thee once with Helena,
To do observance to a morn of May,

There will I stay for thee.
HERMIA
My good Lysander!
I swear to thee, by Cupid’s strongest bow,
By his best arrow with the golden head,
By the simplicity of Venus’ doves,
By that which knitteth souls and prospers loves,
And by that fire which burn’d the Carthage queen,
When the false Troyan under sail was seen,
By all the vows that ever men have broke,
In number more than ever women spoke,
In that same place thou hast appointed me,
To-morrow truly will I meet with thee.
LYSANDER
Keep promise, love. Look, here comes Helena.
Enter HELENA
HERMIA
God speed fair Helena! whither away?
HELENA
Call you me fair? that fair again unsay.
Demetrius loves your fair: O happy fair!
Your eyes are lode-stars; and your tongue’s sweet air
More tuneable than lark to shepherd’s ear,
When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear.
Sickness is catching: O, were favour so,
Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go;
My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye,
My tongue should catch your tongue’s sweet melody.

Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated,
The rest I’d give to be to you translated.
O, teach me how you look, and with what art
You sway the motion of Demetrius’ heart.
HERMIA
I frown upon him, yet he loves me still.
HELENA
O that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill!
HERMIA
I give him curses, yet he gives me love.
HELENA
O that my prayers could such affection move!
HERMIA
The more I hate, the more he follows me.
HELENA
The more I love, the more he hateth me.
HERMIA
His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine.
HELENA
None, but your beauty: would that fault were mine!
HERMIA
Take comfort: he no more shall see my face;
Lysander and myself will fly this place.
Before the time I did Lysander see,

Seem’d Athens as a paradise to me:
O, then, what graces in my love do dwell,
That he hath turn’d a heaven unto a hell!
LYSANDER
Helen, to you our minds we will unfold:
To-morrow night, when Phoebe doth behold
Her silver visage in the watery glass,
Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass,
A time that lovers’ flights doth still conceal,
Through Athens’ gates have we devised to steal.
HERMIA
And in the wood, where often you and I
Upon faint primrose-beds were wont to lie,
Emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet,
There my Lysander and myself shall meet;
And thence from Athens turn away our eyes,
To seek new friends and stranger companies.
Farewell, sweet playfellow: pray thou for us;
And good luck grant thee thy Demetrius!
Keep word, Lysander: we must starve our sight
From lovers’ food till morrow deep midnight.
LYSANDER
I will, my Hermia.
Exit HERMIA
Helena, adieu:
As you on him, Demetrius dote on you!
Exit
HELENA
How happy some o’er other some can be!

Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.
But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;
He will not know what all but he do know:
And as he errs, doting on Hermia’s eyes,
So I, admiring of his qualities:
Things base and vile, folding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind:
Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgement taste;
Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste:
And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,
So the boy Love is perjured every where:
For ere Demetrius look’d on Hermia’s eyne,
He hail’d down oaths that he was only mine;
And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,
So he dissolved, and showers of oaths did melt.
I will go tell him of fair Hermia’s flight:
Then to the wood will he to-morrow night
Pursue her; and for this intelligence
If I have thanks, it is a dear expense:
But herein mean I to enrich my pain,
To have his sight thither and back again.
Exit
SCENE II. Athens. QUINCE’S house.
Enter QUINCE, SNUG, BOTTOM, FLUTE, SNOUT, and
STARVELING

QUINCE
Is all our company here?
BOTTOM
You were best to call them generally, man by man,
according to the scrip.
QUINCE
Here is the scroll of every man’s name, which is
thought fit, through all Athens, to play in our
interlude before the duke and the duchess, on his
wedding-day at night.
BOTTOM
First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats
on, then read the names of the actors, and so grow
to a point.
QUINCE
Marry, our play is, The most lamentable comedy, and
most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby.
BOTTOM
A very good piece of work, I assure you, and a
merry. Now, good Peter Quince, call forth your
actors by the scroll. Masters, spread yourselves.
QUINCE
Answer as I call you. Nick Bottom, the weaver.
BOTTOM
Ready. Name what part I am for, and proceed.

QUINCE
You, Nick Bottom, are set down for Pyramus.
BOTTOM
What is Pyramus? a lover, or a tyrant?
QUINCE
A lover, that kills himself most gallant for love.
BOTTOM
That will ask some tears in the true performing of
it: if I do it, let the audience look to their
eyes; I will move storms, I will condole in some
measure. To the rest: yet my chief humour is for a
tyrant: I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to
tear a cat in, to make all split.
The raging rocks
And shivering shocks
Shall break the locks
Of prison gates;
And Phibbus’ car
Shall shine from far
And make and mar
The foolish Fates.
This was lofty! Now name the rest of the players.
This is Ercles’ vein, a tyrant’s vein; a lover is
more condoling.
QUINCE
Francis Flute, the bellows-mender.
FLUTE
Here, Peter Quince.

QUINCE
Flute, you must take Thisby on you.
FLUTE
What is Thisby? a wandering knight?
QUINCE
It is the lady that Pyramus must love.
FLUTE
Nay, faith, let me not play a woman; I have a beard coming.
QUINCE
That’s all one: you shall play it in a mask, and
you may speak as small as you will.
BOTTOM
An I may hide my face, let me play Thisby too, I’ll
speak in a monstrous little voice. ‘Thisby,
Thisby;’ ‘Ah, Pyramus, lover dear! thy Thisby dear,
and lady dear!’
QUINCE
No, no; you must play Pyramus: and, Flute, you Thisby.
BOTTOM
Well, proceed.
QUINCE
Robin Starveling, the tailor.
STARVELING

Here, Peter Quince.
QUINCE
Robin Starveling, you must play Thisby’s mother.
Tom Snout, the tinker.
SNOUT
Here, Peter Quince.
QUINCE
You, Pyramus’ father: myself, Thisby’s father:
Snug, the joiner; you, the lion’s part: and, I
hope, here is a play fitted.
SNUG
Have you the lion’s part written? pray you, if it
be, give it me, for I am slow of study.
QUINCE
You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring.
BOTTOM
Let me play the lion too: I will roar, that I will
do any man’s heart good to hear me; I will roar,
that I will make the duke say ‘Let him roar again,
let him roar again.’
QUINCE
An you should do it too terribly, you would fright
the duchess and the ladies, that they would shriek;
and that were enough to hang us all.
ALL
That would hang us, every mother’s son.

BOTTOM
I grant you, friends, if that you should fright the
ladies out of their wits, they would have no more
discretion but to hang us: but I will aggravate my
voice so that I will roar you as gently as any
sucking dove; I will roar you an ‘twere any
nightingale.
QUINCE
You can play no part but Pyramus; for Pyramus is a
sweet-faced man; a proper man, as one shall see in a
summer’s day; a most lovely gentleman-like man:
therefore you must needs play Pyramus.
BOTTOM
Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I best
to play it in?
QUINCE
Why, what you will.
BOTTOM
I will discharge it in either your straw-colour
beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain
beard, or your French-crown-colour beard, your
perfect yellow.
QUINCE
Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and
then you will play bare-faced. But, masters, here
are your parts: and I am to entreat you, request
you and desire you, to con them by to-morrow night;

and meet me in the palace wood, a mile without the
town, by moonlight; there will we rehearse, for if
we meet in the city, we shall be dogged with
company, and our devices known. In the meantime I
will draw a bill of properties, such as our play
wants. I pray you, fail me not.
BOTTOM
We will meet; and there we may rehearse most
obscenely and courageously. Take pains; be perfect: adieu.
QUINCE
At the duke’s oak we meet.
BOTTOM
Enough; hold or cut bow-strings.
Exeunt
ACT II
SCENE I. A wood near Athens.
Enter from opposite sides, a Fairy, and PUCK
PUCK
How now, spirit! whither wander you?
FAIRY
Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon’s sphere;
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green.

The cowslips tall her pensioners be:
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours,
In those freckles live their savours:
I must go seek some dewdrops here
And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.
Farewell, thou lob of spirits; I’ll be gone:
Our queen and all our elves come here anon.
PUCK
The king doth keep his revels here to-night:
Take heed the queen come not within his sight;
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Because that she as her attendant hath
A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling;
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild;
But she perforce withholds the loved boy,
Crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy:
And now they never meet in grove or green,
By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,
But, they do square, that all their elves for fear
Creep into acorn-cups and hide them there.
FAIRY
Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call’d Robin Goodfellow: are not you he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;

Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck:
Are not you he?
PUCK
Thou speak’st aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon and make him smile
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob
And on her wither’d dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And ‘tailor’ cries, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,
And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.
But, room, fairy! here comes Oberon.
FAIRY
And here my mistress. Would that he were gone!
Enter, from one side, OBERON, with his train; from the other,
TITANIA, with
hers
OBERON
Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.

TITANIA
What, jealous Oberon! Fairies, skip hence:
I have forsworn his bed and company.
OBERON
Tarry, rash wanton: am not I thy lord?
TITANIA
Then I must be thy lady: but I know
When thou hast stolen away from fairy land,
And in the shape of Corin sat all day,
Playing on pipes of corn and versing love
To amorous Phillida. Why art thou here,
Come from the farthest Steppe of India?
But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon,
Your buskin’d mistress and your warrior love,
To Theseus must be wedded, and you come
To give their bed joy and prosperity.
OBERON
How canst thou thus for shame, Titania,
Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,
Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?
Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night
From Perigenia, whom he ravished?
And make him with fair Aegle break his faith,
With Ariadne and Antiopa?
TITANIA
These are the forgeries of jealousy:
And never, since the middle summer’s spring,
Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,
By paved fountain or by rushy brook,

Or in the beached margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturb’d our sport.
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck’d up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which falling in the land
Have every pelting river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents:
The ox hath therefore stretch’d his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attain’d a beard;
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;
The nine men’s morris is fill’d up with mud,
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
For lack of tread are undistinguishable:
The human mortals want their winter here;
No night is now with hymn or carol blest:
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound:
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Far in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems’ thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which:
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original.

OBERON
Do you amend it then; it lies in you:
Why should Titania cross her Oberon?
I do but beg a little changeling boy,
To be my henchman.
TITANIA
Set your heart at rest:
The fairy land buys not the child of me.
His mother was a votaress of my order:
And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,
Full often hath she gossip’d by my side,
And sat with me on Neptune’s yellow sands,
Marking the embarked traders on the flood,
When we have laugh’d to see the sails conceive
And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;
Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait
Following,--her womb then rich with my young squire,--
Would imitate, and sail upon the land,
To fetch me trifles, and return again,
As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.
But she, being mortal, of that boy did die;
And for her sake do I rear up her boy,
And for her sake I will not part with him.
OBERON
How long within this wood intend you stay?
TITANIA
Perchance till after Theseus’ wedding-day.
If you will patiently dance in our round
And see our moonlight revels, go with us;
If not, shun me, and I will spare your haunts.

OBERON
Give me that boy, and I will go with thee.
TITANIA
Not for thy fairy kingdom. Fairies, away!
We shall chide downright, if I longer stay.
Exit TITANIA with her train
OBERON
Well, go thy way: thou shalt not from this grove
Till I torment thee for this injury.
My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememberest
Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid’s music.
PUCK
I remember.
OBERON
That very time I saw, but thou couldst not,
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all arm’d: a certain aim he took
At a fair vestal throned by the west,
And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;
But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft
Quench’d in the chaste beams of the watery moon,

And the imperial votaress passed on,
In maiden meditation, fancy-free.
Yet mark’d I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound,
And maidens call it love-in-idleness.
Fetch me that flower; the herb I shew’d thee once:
The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid
Will make or man or woman madly dote
Upon the next live creature that it sees.
Fetch me this herb; and be thou here again
Ere the leviathan can swim a league.
PUCK
I’ll put a girdle round about the earth
In forty minutes.
Exit
OBERON
Having once this juice,
I’ll watch Titania when she is asleep,
And drop the liquor of it in her eyes.
The next thing then she waking looks upon,
Be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull,
On meddling monkey, or on busy ape,
She shall pursue it with the soul of love:
And ere I take this charm from off her sight,
As I can take it with another herb,
I’ll make her render up her page to me.
But who comes here? I am invisible;
And I will overhear their conference.
Enter DEMETRIUS, HELENA, following him
DEMETRIUS

I love thee not, therefore pursue me not.
Where is Lysander and fair Hermia?
The one I’ll slay, the other slayeth me.
Thou told’st me they were stolen unto this wood;
And here am I, and wode within this wood,
Because I cannot meet my Hermia.
Hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more.
HELENA
You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant;
But yet you draw not iron, for my heart
Is true as steel: leave you your power to draw,
And I shall have no power to follow you.
DEMETRIUS
Do I entice you? do I speak you fair?
Or, rather, do I not in plainest truth
Tell you, I do not, nor I cannot love you?
HELENA
And even for that do I love you the more.
I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,
The more you beat me, I will fawn on you:
Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me,
Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,
Unworthy as I am, to follow you.
What worser place can I beg in your love,--
And yet a place of high respect with me,--
Than to be used as you use your dog?
DEMETRIUS
Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit;
For I am sick when I do look on thee.

HELENA
And I am sick when I look not on you.
DEMETRIUS
You do impeach your modesty too much,
To leave the city and commit yourself
Into the hands of one that loves you not;
To trust the opportunity of night
And the ill counsel of a desert place
With the rich worth of your virginity.
HELENA
Your virtue is my privilege: for that
It is not night when I do see your face,
Therefore I think I am not in the night;
Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company,
For you in my respect are all the world:
Then how can it be said I am alone,
When all the world is here to look on me?
DEMETRIUS
I’ll run from thee and hide me in the brakes,
And leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts.
HELENA
The wildest hath not such a heart as you.
Run when you will, the story shall be changed:
Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chase;
The dove pursues the griffin; the mild hind
Makes speed to catch the tiger; bootless speed,
When cowardice pursues and valour flies.
DEMETRIUS

I will not stay thy questions; let me go:
Or, if thou follow me, do not believe
But I shall do thee mischief in the wood.
HELENA
Ay, in the temple, in the town, the field,
You do me mischief. Fie, Demetrius!
Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex:
We cannot fight for love, as men may do;
We should be wood and were not made to woo.
Exit DEMETRIUS
I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell,
To die upon the hand I love so well.
Exit
OBERON
Fare thee well, nymph: ere he do leave this grove,
Thou shalt fly him and he shall seek thy love.
Re-enter PUCK
Hast thou the flower there? Welcome, wanderer.
PUCK
Ay, there it is.
OBERON
I pray thee, give it me.
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in:
And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes,
And make her full of hateful fantasies.
Take thou some of it, and seek through this grove:
A sweet Athenian lady is in love
With a disdainful youth: anoint his eyes;
But do it when the next thing he espies
May be the lady: thou shalt know the man
By the Athenian garments he hath on.
Effect it with some care, that he may prove
More fond on her than she upon her love:
And look thou meet me ere the first cock crow.
PUCK
Fear not, my lord, your servant shall do so.
Exit
SCENE II. Another part of the wood.
Enter TITANIA, with her train
TITANIA
Come, now a roundel and a fairy song;
Then, for the third part of a minute, hence;
Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds,
Some war with rere-mice for their leathern wings,
To make my small elves coats, and some keep back
The clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders
At our quaint spirits. Sing me now asleep;

Then to your offices and let me rest.
THE FAIRIES SING
You spotted snakes with double tongue,
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong,
Come not near our fairy queen.
Philomel, with melody
Sing in our sweet lullaby;
Lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby:
Never harm,
Nor spell nor charm,
Come our lovely lady nigh;
So, good night, with lullaby.
Weaving spiders, come not here;
Hence, you long-legg’d spinners, hence!
Beetles black, approach not near;
Worm nor snail, do no offence.
Philomel, with melody, & c.
FAIRY
Hence, away! now all is well:
One aloof stand sentinel.
Exeunt Fairies. TITANIA sleeps
Enter OBERON and squeezes the flower on TITANIA’s eyelids
OBERON
What thou seest when thou dost wake,
Do it for thy true-love take,
Love and languish for his sake:
Be it ounce, or cat, or bear,

Pard, or boar with bristled hair,
In thy eye that shall appear
When thou wakest, it is thy dear:
Wake when some vile thing is near.
Exit
Enter LYSANDER and HERMIA
LYSANDER
Fair love, you faint with wandering in the wood;
And to speak troth, I have forgot our way:
We’ll rest us, Hermia, if you think it good,
And tarry for the comfort of the day.
HERMIA
Be it so, Lysander: find you out a bed;
For I upon this bank will rest my head.
LYSANDER
One turf shall serve as pillow for us both;
One heart, one bed, two bosoms and one troth.
HERMIA
Nay, good Lysander; for my sake, my …
I I .tS1 i
J N THE PERIOD of the shortest, sleepy winter days,
I- caught on both sides, from morning and from evening, in
furred, crepuscular edgings, as the town branched its way
deeper and deeper into the labyrinths of the winter nights, to

be called back and shaken to its senses by only a fleeting dawn
- my father was already lost, sold, pledged to the other
sphere.
His face and head had become luxuriantly and wildly
overgrown in those days with a covering of grey hair, sprouting
irregularly in bunches, bristles and long brushes, which
protruded from his warts, his eyebrows and his nostrils and
lent to his physiognomy the appearance of a pugnacious old
fox.
His senses of smell and hearing were inordinately sharp-
86 Bruno Schulz The Cinnamon Shops 87
ened, and it showed in the agitations of his tense, silent
features that he remained, through the mediation of those
senses, in continual contact with an invisible world of dark
nooks, mouse holes, musty empty spaces beneath the floor,
and chimney ducts.
All the scratching and noisy nocturnal knocking, all the
secret, creaking life of the floor, found in him an unfailing and

vigilant observer, a spy and a co-conspirator. Beyond the point
of no return, he was absorbed by that sphere, inaccessible to
us, which he made no attempt to explain to us. Often, when
the antics of the invisible sphere grew too absurd, he could
only flick his fingers and laugh quietly to himself. At such
times, by a glance, he would confer with our cat, also initiated
into that world, which raised its cold, cynical face etched with
stripes and narrowed in boredom and indifference its slanting
chinks of eyes.
During dinner, he might put aside his knife and fork in the
middle of the meal and rise with a feline motion, his napkin
tied under his chin. He crept on toe-pads to an adjacent door,
an empty room, and peeked with the greatest circumspection
through the keyhole. Then he returned to the table as if
ashamed, a sheepish smile emerging through purrs and
indistinct mutters, which pertained only to the inner
monologue in which he was engrossed.
In order to provide him with some distraction, and to tear

him away from his morbid investigations, Mother took him for
evening walks, to which he acceded silently and without
resistance, albeit half-heartedly, absent minded, distracted and
miles away. Once, we even went to the theatre.
We found ourselves again at last in that great, dimly lit and
dirty hall, all sleepy human hubbub and chaotic commotion.
But once we had pushed through the human throng, the
gigantic, pale sky-blue curtain loomed before us like the sky of
another firmament. Great, pink-painted masks with puffed
out cheeks undulated on its enormous canvas expanse. That
artificial sky spread wide, flowed down and athwart, swelling
with an enormous gulp of pathos and broad gestures, the
atmosphere of that world, artificial and full of radiance, which
had been erected there, on the clattering scaffolding of the
stage. A shudder flowing through the great countenance of
that sky, a breath of the enormous canvas which made the
masks bulge and come to life, betrayed the illusoriness of that
firmament, gave rise to that tremor of reality which we, in our

metaphysical moments, sense as a glimmer of the mysterious.
The masks fluttered their red eyelids; their coloured lips
voicelessly whispered something; and I knew that the moment
was at hand when the secret tensions would reach their
zenith, when the brimming sky of the curtain would really
part and float away to reveal stupendous and enchanting
things.
But it was a moment I was not destined to savour; for
Father, meanwhile, had begun to display certain signs of
anxiety. He grasped at his pockets and finally announced that
he had forgotten his wallet, together with his money and
important documents. After a brief consultation with Mother,
during which Adela's honesty was subjected to hasty,
comprehensive appraisal, it was proposed to me that I return
home in search of the wallet. Mother judged that there still
remained plenty of time until the commencement of the

performance, and that, given my nimbleness, I could easily be
back in time.
I went out into a winter's night coloured by the illumination
of the sky. It was one of those bright nights in which the astral
firmament is so immense and branched, almost fallen apart,
broken into pieces and divided into a labyrinth of separate
heavens, abundant enough to be shared among whole months
of winter nights, to overlay with its silvered and painted globes
all of their nocturnal phenomena, adventures, scandals and
carnivals.
It is unpardonable recklessness to send a young boy out on
such a night on an important and urgent mission; for in its
half-light the streets will grow tangled and multifarious, each
exchanged for another. Deep inside the town there open up,
so to speak, double streets, doppelganger streets, mendacious
and delusive streets. One's imagination, enchanted and
misled, produces false maps of the ostensibly long-known and
familiar town where those streets have their places and their
names, whilst the night, in its inexhaustible fecundity, can

find nothing better to do than to produce continually new and
fictitious configurations. Such temptations of winter nights
usually begin innocently, with the intention of taking a
shortcut, of chancing some unaccustomed or swifter alley.
The enticing arrangements of an intersection arise, of
convoluted progress along some untried cross street. But this
time it began differently.
Having gone a few steps, I realised I had left my overcoat
behind. I was on the point of turning back, but on reflection
this seemed a needless waste of time; for the night was not
cold at all. Quite the reverse, it was veined with streams of a
strange warmth, the wafts of some false spring. The snow
dwindled into white strands, an innocent, sweet fleece
scented with violets, and into those very strands the sky began
to thaw, where the moon showed itself twice, three times over,
demonstrating by this multiplicity all of its phases and
positions.
The sky had lain bare that day the interior of its
construction, as if in numerous anatomical preparations,

displaying spirals and veins of light, sections of the night's
turquoise solids, the plasma of its expanses and the tissue of its
nocturnal reveries.
On such a night, one was unlikely to walk along Podwale, or
any of the other dark streets which form the reverse side, the
lining, as it were, of the four sides of the market square,
without recalling that, occasionally in that late season, one or
two of those curious and so alluring shops would still be open,
which slipped one's mind on ordinary days. I called them the
cinnamon shops, in honour of that dark hue of the wainscoting
with which they were panelled.
Those truly noble businesses, open late into the night, had
always been the object of my most fervid dreams. Their dimly
lit, dark and solemn interiors exuded a rich, deep aroma of
paints, lacquer and incense, a fragrance of remote countries
and rare materials. There, one might find Bengal lights, magic
caskets, the stamps of long vanished countries, Chinese decals,
indigo, colophony from Malabar, the eggs of exotic insects,

parrots, toucans, live salamanders and basilisks, mandrake
90 Bruno Schulz
roots, mechanical toys from Nuremberg, homunculi in tiny
pots, microscopes and telescopes, and above all, rare and
peculiar books, old volumes full of astonishing illustrations
and intoxicating stories.
I remember those merchants, old and dignified, who served
their clients in discreet silence and were full of wisdom and
understanding of their most secret wishes. But most of all,
there was a certain bookshop there, where once I saw a
number of rare and forbidden editions, the publications of
secret lodges, lifting the veil from tormenting and intoxicating
mysteries.
So seldom did an opportunity arise to visit those shops -
and with, moreover, some small but adequate amount of
money in one's pocket - that I could not forgo this
opportunity now, pressing as may be the mission entrusted to
our zeal. By my reckoning, I would have to proceed along a
certain side street, passing two or three corners, in order to
reach the street of the nocturnal shops. This would lead me

away from my objective, but I could make good the delay if I
returned by way of Zupy Solne.
Lent wings by my desire to visit the cinnamon shops, I
turned into a street that I knew - flying more than walking,
anxious not to go astray. Thus I passed by three or four cross
streets, but the street I sought was not along any of those.
What is more, the configuration of the streets no longer
corresponded to the image of them in my mind's eye. No trace
of the shops. I walked along a street whose houses had no
entrances; only windows shut tight and blinded by a gleam of
the moon. The correct street must lead along the other side of
The Cinnamon Shops 91
those houses, I thought to myself, where their entrances are. I
anxiously quickened my step, beginning deep down to
relinquish any hope of visiting the shops; merely with the
intention of emerging swiftly from there into a region of town
that I knew. I approached an exit, uneasy about where it might
bring me out this time, and entered a broad, sparsely built-up
highway, very long and straight, and at once a blast from its

expanse swept over me. Here, alongside the street or deep
within gardens, stood picturesque villas, the decorative
buildings of the wealthy; parks and the walls of orchards were
visible in the gaps between them. At a distance the vista was
reminiscent of ulica Leszniañska in its lower and seldom
visited regions. The moonlight was pale and bright as day,
unravelling into a thousand strands, silver flakes in the sky,
and only the parks and gardens loomed black in that silver
landscape.
Scrutinising one of the buildings more closely, I concluded
that before me stood the rear and hitherto unseen side of the
gymnasium school. I went directly up to the entrance, which
to my surprise was unlocked, the hallway lighted, and entered
to find myself on the red carpet of a corridor. I was hoping to
steal unnoticed through the building and leave by the front
gate, thus taking a magnificent shortcut.
Then it dawned on me that, at that late hour, one of
Professor Arendt's elective lessons must still be taking place,
which he conducted late into the night in his classroom, and to

which we flocked in wintertime, burning with the noble
enthusiasm for drawing exercises that our outstanding teacher
inspired in us.
92 Bruno Schulz
Our little group of students would be all but lost in that
great, dark room, the shadows of our heads growing enormous
and fragmented on the walls, cast by two small candles
burning in the necks of bottles. In truth, not many of us used
those hours for drawing, and the professor did not stipulate
too exacting demands. One or two of us had brought pillows
from home and now settled down on the benches for a light
nap. Only the most studious sat under a solitary candle,
drawing something or other in the golden circle of its radiance.
Growing bored, holding sleepy conversations, we usually
had to wait a long time for the professor to arrive. At last his
study door opened and he entered, a small man with a
beautiful beard, all esoteric smiles, discreet concealments and

an air of mystery. He quickly closed the study door behind
him, through which, for the brief instant it had stood open, a
throng of plaster shades had huddled together beyond his
head, classical fragments, mournful Niobids, DanaIds and
Tantalids, a whole sad and barren Olympus withering
throughout the years in that museum of plaster figures. That
room was filled even in the daytime with a cloudy haze,
overflowing sleepily with plaster dreams, empty looks, fading
profiles and musings receding into nothingness. We often
liked to eavesdrop at that door, on the sighing, whispering
silence of that rubble, crumbling amid cobwebs, that twilight
of the gods, decomposing in boredom and monotony.
The professor strolled, solemn and dignified, along the bare
benches where we made our drawings, dispersed in small
groups in the grey gleams of the winter night. It grew hushed
and sleepy. Here and there, my colleagues were settling down
The Cinnamon Shops 93
to sleep. The candles slowly burned out in their bottles. The

professor was engrossed in a deep glass case full of old
volumes, antiquated illustrations, etchings and prints. Making
esoteric gestures, he showed us old lithographs of evening
landscapes, dense nocturnal forests and the avenues of winter
parks, looming black on white, moonlit roads.
Time passed unnoticed amid our sleepy conversations,
running unevenly, seeming to tie knots in the flowing of the
hours, swallowing away to who knows where whole stretches
of their duration. Imperceptibly, without transference, we
rediscovered our group already making its way home along a
lane white with snow and edged with a dry, black thicket of
bushes. We walked along that shaggy edge of the darkness,
brushing against the bearskin of the bushes, which cracked
under our feet in the bright, moonless night, the false, milky
daylight long after midnight. The diffuse whiteness of that
light, drizzling with snow, the pallid air and milky space, was
like the grey paper of an etching, where strokes and hatching
of compact brushwood were tangled in deep black. The night,
deep into the early hours, now replicated that series of

nocturnes, Professor Arendt's nocturnal etchings, and carried
further his imaginings.
In that park's black forestation, its shaggy fleece of
brushwood, its mass of brittle twigs, were found niches and
nests, places of the deepest, downiest darkness, full of
embroilment, secret gestures and incoherent conversations in
finger language. It was hushed and warm in those nests, where
we sat in our shaggy coats on the soft, summery snow, gorging
ourselves on the nuts with which the hazel bushes were
94 Bruno Schulz
replete in that springtime winter. Martens, weasels and
ichneumons silently wound their way through the brushwood,
furry, sniffing little animals stinking of sheepskin, elongated,
on short little paws. We suspected that among them were
specimens from the school cabinet, which albeit disem-
bowelled and moulting, had heard in their empty innards on
that white night the voice of an old instinct, a mating call, and
had returned to their lair for a brief, illusory lifespan.

But the phosphorescence of the spring snow slowly grew
cloudy and died away, and the thick, black murk before
daybreak set in. Some of us fell asleep in the warm snow,
whilst others scrabbled in the dense thicket for the entrances
to their houses. They groped their way into those dark
interiors, into the dreams of their parents and siblings, falling
into a continuance of the deep snoring they had tracked down
on their dawdling ways.
Those nocturnal assemblies were full of mysterious charm
for me, and I could not forgo the opportunity now to peek into
the art room for a moment, resolving to spare only a few
minutes for the visit. But as I ascended a flight of cedar
backstairs, filled with ringing echoes, I realised I was now in
some hitherto unseen, unknown part of the building.
Not the slightest sound disturbed the solemn silence here.
The corridors were more spacious on this wing, lined with
plush carpet and abounding in finery. Small, dimly glowing
lamps shone at the corners. Turning one such corner, I found
myself in an even wider corridor, bedecked in palatial
sumptuousness, where one of the walls was open through

wide, glazed arches onto the interior of an apartment. Before
'The Cinnamon Shops 95
my eyes a long enfilade of rooms began, receding into the
depths and furnished with dazzling magnificence. My eye was
drawn along its lane of tussore-silk hangings and gilded
mirrors, expensive furniture and crystal chandeliers, far into
the downy pulp of those extravagant interiors, full of coloured
whirling, shimmering arabesques, winding garlands and
budding flowers. The profound silence of those empty
parlours was inhabited only in the secret looks that the mirrors
exchanged, and a panic of arabesques which ran aloft in
friezes along the walls and were lost in the stucco-work of the
white ceilings.
I stood in admiration and awe before that sumptuousness. I
suspected that my nocturnal escapade had led me
unexpectedly to the headmaster's wing and before his private
apartment. I stood transfixed with curiosity, my heart
pounding, ready to take flight at the slightest noise; for how, if

discovered, could I justify this, my nocturnal espionage, my
audacious snooping? The headmaster's little daughter might
be sitting, unobserved and silent, in one of the deep, plush
armchairs and suddenly raise her eyes to me from behind her
book - her black, sibylline and calm eyes whose look none of
us could hold. But it would be cowardice, I decided, to
withdraw in mid-course, without having fulfilled my
objective. Besides, absolute silence reigned everywhere in
those interiors, filled with sumptuousness and illumined by
the dimmed light of the indeterminate hour. Through the
arches of the corridor, at the far end of a great parlour, I could
see a large glazed door which led onto a terrace. It was so quiet
all around that I mustered my courage. There did not seem to
be too great a risk involved in descending the few stairs to
floor level and, in a few bounds, crossing the vast, expensive
carpet to the terrace, from where I could easily reach a street I

knew.
I did so, and as soon as I had stepped down onto the parquet
floor of that parlour, beneath the huge palms that stood in
vases there, shooting up as high as the arabesques of the
ceiling, I noticed that I had, in fact, reached neutral ground;
for the parlour had no front wall whatsoever. It was a kind of
loggia, connecting by two or three steps to the town square, an
offshoot, as it were, of that square, where a few items of
furniture were arranged on the pavement. I ran down the few
stone steps and was once more in the street.
The constellations were standing precipitously on their
heads. The stars had all turned over onto their other sides in
their sleep, while the moon, buried in an eiderdown of little
clouds, which it illumined with its invisible presence,
appeared to have an endless road still before it. Absorbed by
its convoluted celestial procedures, it spared not a thought for
daybreak.
A few worn out and rickety droshkies loomed black in the

street like crippled, dozing crabs or cockroaches. A coachman
leaned out from his high seat. He had a small, red and good
natured face. "Shall we go, young sir?" he asked. The coach
shook in all the joints and ligatures of its many-limbed body
and moved off on its light wheels.
But who on such a night will entrust himself to the whims
of an irresponsible droshky driver? Amid the clattering of the
spokes and the rumbling of the box and roof, I tried to make
my destination known to him. Heedless and indulgent, he
shook his head at everything I said. Humming a tune to
himself, he drove by a circuitous route through the town.
A group of droshky drivers stood before a taproom; they
waved to him amiably. He cheerfully made some reply and
threw the reins onto my knees, not even drawing the carriage
to a halt. He got down from his seat and went to join the group
of his colleagues. The horse, a wise old droshky horse, looked
around nonchalantly and continued on his way at a steady,
droshky trot. This horse, as a matter of fact, filled me with

confidence; he seemed to be smarter than the coachman. But I
didn't know how to steer him; I had to submit to his will. We
set off along a suburban street enclosed on both sides by
gardens. Those gardens, the further they extended, slowly
gave way to parks of many trees, and they to forests.
I shall never forget that luminous drive on the brightest of
winter nights. The coloured map of the heavens had
expanded into a vast cupola, where fantastic lands, oceans and
seas towered, etched in lines of starry whirlpools and currents,
luminous lines of celestial geography. The air became easy to
breathe and was lit up like a silver gas. It held a scent of
violets. From under the snow, woolly like white karakul furs,
tremulous anemones began to appear, a spark of moonlight in
each delicate chalice. The entire forest was illumined as if by
a thousand lights, stars that the Decçmber firmament was
plentifully shedding. The air breathed with some secret

spring, the inexpressible purity of snow and violets. We
entered hilly terrain and the lines of the hills, shagged with
the bare twigs of trees, rose like blissful sighs into the sky. I
caught a glimpse on those exultant hillsides of whole groups of
wanderers, gathering up amid moss and bushes the fallen and
snow-dampened stars. The road grew steeper. The horse
skidded and struggled to pull the carriage, all of its ligatures
screeching. I was elated. My breast imbibed that delightful
spring air, the freshness of the stars and the snow. A bank of
snowy white foam built up higher and higher before the
horse's breast, and the horse arduously dug a passage through
its pure, fresh mass. At last we came to a standstill and I
stepped down from the droshky. He was breathing heavily, his
head bowed. I held his head to my breast. Tears glistened in
his great, black eyes. Then I noticed a round, black wound on
his belly. "Why didn't you tell me?" I whispered in tears. "My
dear, it is for you," he said, suddenly becoming very small, like
a little horse made of wood. I left him. I felt strangely light and

happy. I pondered whether I ought to wait for the local train,
the little, narrow-gauge train that stopped there, or return to
town on foot. I set off walking along a steep serpentine in the
depths of the forest, going at first with light, flexible steps, and
then, gathering momentum, at an ambling, euphoric run
which soon became a ride, like skiing. I found I could adjust
my speed at will and steer the ride with nimble turns of my
body.
I curbed my triumphal run on reaching the edge of town,
modifying it to a sensible, leisurely pace. The moon was still
high; the sky's transformations were unending, the metamor-
phoses of its multitudinous vaults in ever more masterfully
described configurations. The sky had opened up that night,
like a silver astrolabe, its bewitching internal mechanism,
exhibiting in endless cycles the gilded mathematics of its cogs
and wheels.
In the market square, I came across people out taking
strolls. Enchanted by the spectacle of that night, their faces
were all turned heavenward and silvered by the magic of the

sky. All concern over the wallet had left me; caught up in his
eccentricities, Father had surely forgotten by now that he had
ever lost it. I didn't care about Mother.
On such a night, unique in a year, propitious thoughts
come, inspirations, prophetic touches of the divine finger. I
was about to head for home, filled with ideas and inspiration,
when my school friends sidetracked me, carrying books under
their arms. They had set off for school too early, awoken by
the brightness of that night that did not want to end.
100 Bruno Schulz
We set off walking in a group, along a steeply descending
street where a breeze of violets blew, uncertain whether it was
still the night's magic that silvered the snow, or whether, at
last, the dawn was rising...
LII kw. £i si :ox4li 11
J N THE BOTTOM DRAWER of his fathomless desk, my
.1 father kept an old and beautiful map of our town.

It was a whole in-folio volume of parchment sheets, bound
at one time with linen strips, which formed an enormous wall
map in the style of a panorama in bird's-eye perspective.
Hung on the wall, it unfolded almost to the full length of
the room, and opened a wide vista onto the whole valley of the
Tymienica - a ribbon of pale gold wending its tortuous way
- onto a whole lakeland of widely scattered marshes and
ponds, folding forelands that drew away to the south,
sporadically at first and then in ever more gathering layers, a
chessboard of curved hills, smaller and paler the further they
sank into the golden and smoky mist of the horizon. Out of
that sagging distance of the periphery, our town came into
Page 1Page 2Page 3Page 4Page 5Page 6Page 7Page 8Page 9
The Watery Maze
Les Miserables Volume 5 Book III : Mud but the Soul
p. 2
by Victor Hugo
Armilla from Invisible Cities
p. 8
by Italo Calvino

Les Miserables Volume 5 Book III : Mud but the Soul
by Victor Hugo
It was in the sewers of Paris that Jean Valjean found himself.
Still another resemblance between Paris and the sea. As in the
ocean, the diver
may disappear there.
The transition was an unheard-of one. In the very heart of the
city, Jean Valjean
had escaped from the city, and, in the twinkling of an eye, in
the time required
to lift the cover and to replace it, he had passed from broad
daylight to com-
plete obscurity, from midday to midnight, from tumult to
silence, from the whirl-
wind of thunders to the stagnation of the tomb, and, by a
vicissitude far more
tremendous even than that of the Rue Polonceau, from the most
extreme peril
to the most absolute obscurity.
An abrupt fall into a cavern; a disappearance into the secret
trap-door of Par-
is; to quit that street where death was on every side, for that
sort of sepulchre
where there was life, was a strange instant. He remained for
several seconds as
though bewildered; listening, stupefied. The waste-trap of
safety had sudden-
ly yawned beneath him. Celestial goodness had, in a manner,
captured him by

treachery. Adorable ambuscades of providence!
Only, the wounded man did not stir, and Jean Valjean did not
know whether
that which he was carrying in that grave was a living being or a
dead corpse.
His first sensation was one of blindness. All of a sudden, he
could see nothing.
It seemed to him too, that, in one instant, he had become deaf.
He no longer
heard anything. The frantic storm of murder which had been let
loose a few
feet above his head did not reach him, thanks to the thickness of
the earth
which separated him from it, as we have said, otherwise than
faintly and in-
distinctly, and like a rumbling, in the depths. He felt that the
ground was solid
under his feet; that was all; but that was enough. He extended
one arm and
then the other, touched the walls on both sides, and perceived
that the pas-
sage was narrow; he slipped, and thus perceived that the
pavement was wet.
He cautiously put forward one foot, fearing a hole, a sink, some
gulf; he discov-
ered that the paving continued. A gust of fetidness informed
him of the place in
which he stood.
After the lapse of a few minutes, he was no longer blind. A
little light fell

through the man-hole through which he had descended, and his
eyes became
accustomed to this cavern. He began to distinguish something.
The passage in
which he had burrowed—no other word can better express the
situation—was
walled in behind him. It was one of those blind alleys, which
the special jargon
terms branches. In front of him there was another wall, a wall
like night. The
light of the air-hole died out ten or twelve paces from the point
where Jean Val-
jean stood, and barely cast a wan pallor on a few metres of the
damp walls of
the sewer. Beyond, the opaqueness was massive; to penetrate
thither seemed
horrible, an entrance into it appeared like an engulfment. A man
could, however,
plunge into that wall of fog and it was necessary so to do. Haste
was even req-
uisite. It occurred to Jean Valjean that the grating which he had
caught sight of
under the flag-stones might also catch the eye of the soldiery,
and that every-
thing hung upon this chance. They also might descend into that
well and search
it. There was not a minute to be lost. He had deposited Marius
on the ground,
he picked him up again,—that is the real word for it,—placed
him on his shoul-
ders once more, and set out. He plunged resolutely into the
gloom.
The truth is, that they were less safe than Jean Valjean fancied.
Perils of an-
other sort and no less serious were awaiting them, perchance.

After the light-
ning-charged whirlwind of the combat, the cavern of miasmas
and traps; after
chaos, the sewer. Jean Valjean had fallen from one circle of hell
into another.
When he had advanced fifty paces, he was obliged to halt. A
problem presented
itself. The passage terminated in another gut which he
encountered across his
path. There two ways presented themselves. Which should he
take? Ought he
to turn to the left or to the right? How was he to find his
bearings in that black
labyrinth? This labyrinth, to which we have already called the
reader’s attention,
has a clue, which is its slope. To follow to the slope is to arrive
at the river.
This Jean Valjean instantly comprehended.
He said to himself that he was probably in the sewer des Halles;
that if he were
to choose the path to the left and follow the slope, he would
arrive, in less than
a quarter of an hour, at some mouth on the Seine between the
Pont au Change
and the Pont-Neuf, that is to say, he would make his appearance
in broad day-
light on the most densely peopled spot in Paris. Perhaps he
would come out
on some man-hole at the intersection of streets. Amazement of
the passers-by

at beholding two bleeding men emerge from the earth at their
feet. Arrival of
the police, a call to arms of the neighboring post of guards.
Thus they would be
seized before they had even got out. It would be better to plunge
into that lab-
yrinth, to confide themselves to that black gloom, and to trust to
Providence for
the outcome.
He ascended the incline, and turned to the right.
When he had turned the angle of the gallery, the distant
glimmer of an air-hole
disappeared, the curtain of obscurity fell upon him once more,
and he became
blind again. Nevertheless, he advanced as rapidly as possible.
Marius’ two arms
were passed round his neck, and the former’s feet dragged
behind him. He
held both these arms with one hand, and groped along the wall
with the oth-
er. Marius’ cheek touched his, and clung there, bleeding. He felt
a warm stream
which came from Marius trickling down upon him and making
its way under his
clothes. But a humid warmth near his ear, which the mouth of
the wounded
man touched, indicated respiration, and consequently, life. The
passage along
which Jean Valjean was now proceeding was not so narrow as
the first. Jean
Valjean walked through it with considerable difficulty. The rain
of the preceding
day had not, as yet, entirely run off, and it created a little
torrent in the centre

of the bottom, and he was forced to hug the wall in order not to
have his feet in
the water.
Thus he proceeded in the gloom. He resembled the beings of the
night groping
in the invisible and lost beneath the earth in veins of shadow.
Still, little by little, whether it was that the distant air-holes
emitted a little wa-
vering light in this opaque gloom, or whether his eyes had
become accustomed
to the obscurity, some vague vision returned to him, and he
began once more
to gain a confused idea, now of the wall which he touched, now
of the vault be-
neath which he was passing. The pupil dilates in the dark, and
the soul dilates in
misfortune and ends by finding God there.
It was not easy to direct his course.
The line of the sewer re-echoes, so to speak, the line of the
streets which lie
above it. There were then in Paris two thousand two hundred
streets. Let the
reader imagine himself beneath that forest of gloomy branches
which is called
the sewer. The system of sewers existing at that epoch, placed
end to end,
would have given a length of eleven leagues. We have said
above, that the ac-
tual network, thanks to the special activity of the last thirty

years, was no less
than sixty leagues in extent.
Jean Valjean began by committing a blunder. He thought that he
was be-
neath the Rue Saint-Denis, and it was a pity that it was not so.
Under the Rue
Saint-Denis there is an old stone sewer which dates from Louis
XIII. and which
runs straight to the collecting sewer, called the Grand Sewer,
with but a single
elbow, on the right, on the elevation of the ancient Cour des
Miracles, and a
single branch, the Saint-Martin sewer, whose four arms describe
a cross. But
the gut of the Petite-Truanderie the entrance to which was in the
vicinity of
the Corinthe wine-shop has never communicated with the sewer
of the Rue
Saint-Denis; it ended at the Montmartre sewer, and it was in
this that Jean Val-
jean was entangled. There opportunities of losing oneself
abound. The Mont-
martre sewer is one of the most labyrinthine of the ancient
network. Fortunate-
ly, Jean Valjean had left behind him the sewer of the markets
whose geometrical
plan presents the appearance of a multitude of parrots’ roosts
piled on top of
each other; but he had before him more than one embarrassing
encounter and
more than one street corner—for they are streets—presenting
itself in the gloom
like an interrogation point; first, on his left, the vast sewer of
the Plâtrière, a sort
of Chinese puzzle, thrusting out and entangling its chaos of Ts

and Zs under the
Post-Office and under the rotunda of the Wheat Market, as far
as the Seine,
where it terminates in a Y; secondly, on his right, the curving
corridor of the Rue
du Cadran with its three teeth, which are also blind courts;
thirdly, on his left,
the branch of the Mail, complicated, almost at its inception,
with a sort of fork,
and proceeding from zig-zag to zig-zag until it ends in the grand
crypt of the
outlet of the Louvre, truncated and ramified in every direction;
and lastly, the
blind alley of a passage of the Rue des Jeûneurs, without
counting little ducts
here and there, before reaching the belt sewer, which alone
could conduct him
to some issue sufficiently distant to be safe.
Had Jean Valjean had any idea of all that we have here pointed
out, he would
speedily have perceived, merely by feeling the wall, that he was
not in the sub-
terranean gallery of the Rue Saint-Denis. Instead of the ancient
stone, instead
of the antique architecture, haughty and royal even in the sewer,
with pave-
ment and string courses of granite and mortar costing eight
hundred livres the
fathom, he would have felt under his hand contemporary
cheapness, economi-
cal expedients, porous stone filled with mortar on a concrete
foundation, which

costs two hundred francs the metre, and the bourgeoise masonry
known as à
petits matériaux—small stuff; but of all this he knew nothing.
He advanced with anxiety, but with calmness, seeing nothing,
knowing nothing,
buried in chance, that is to say, engulfed in providence.
By degrees, we will admit, a certain horror seized upon him.
The gloom which
enveloped him penetrated his spirit. He walked in an enigma.
This aqueduct of
the sewer is formidable; it interlaces in a dizzy fashion. It is a
melancholy thing
to be caught in this Paris of shadows. Jean Valjean was obliged
to find and even
to invent his route without seeing it. In this unknown, every
step that he risked
might be his last. How was he to get out? should he find an
issue? should he
find it in time? would that colossal subterranean sponge with its
stone cavi-
ties, allow itself to be penetrated and pierced? should he there
encounter some
unexpected knot in the darkness? should he arrive at the
inextricable and the
impassable? would Marius die there of hemorrhage and he of
hunger? should
they end by both getting lost, and by furnishing two skeletons in
a nook of that
night? He did not know. He put all these questions to himself
without replying
to them. The intestines of Paris form a precipice. Like the
prophet, he was in the
belly of the monster.

All at once, he had a surprise. At the most unforeseen moment,
and without
having ceased to walk in a straight line, he perceived that he
was no longer as-
cending; the water of the rivulet was beating against his heels,
instead of meet-
ing him at his toes. The sewer was now descending. Why? Was
he about to
arrive suddenly at the Seine? This danger was a great one, but
the peril of re-
treating was still greater. He continued to advance.
It was not towards the Seine that he was proceeding. The ridge
which the soil
of Paris forms on its right bank empties one of its watersheds
into the Seine
and the other into the Grand Sewer. The crest of this ridge
which determines
the division of the waters describes a very capricious line. The
culminating
point, which is the point of separation of the currents, is in the
Sainte-Avoye
sewer, beyond the Rue Michel-le-Comte, in the sewer of the
Louvre, near the
boulevards, and in the Montmartre sewer, near the Halles. It
was this culminat-
ing point that Jean Valjean had reached. He was directing his
course towards
the belt sewer; he was on the right path. But he did not know it.
Every time that he encountered a branch, he felt of its angles,
and if he found
that the opening which presented itself was smaller than the
passage in which

he was, he did not enter but continued his route, rightly judging
that every nar-
rower way must needs terminate in a blind alley, and could only
lead him fur-
ther from his goal, that is to say, the outlet. Thus he avoided the
quadruple trap
which was set for him in the darkness by the four labyrinths
which we have just
enumerated.
At a certain moment, he perceived that he was emerging from
beneath the Par-
is which was petrified by the uprising, where the barricades had
suppressed
circulation, and that he was entering beneath the living and
normal Paris. Over-
head he suddenly heard a noise as of thunder, distant but
continuous. It was
the rumbling of vehicles.
He had been walking for about half an hour, at least according
to the calcula-
tion which he made in his own mind, and he had not yet thought
of rest; he had
merely changed the hand with which he was holding Marius.
The darkness was
more profound than ever, but its very depth reassured him.
All at once, he saw his shadow in front of him. It was outlined
on a faint, almost
indistinct reddish glow, which vaguely empurpled the flooring
vault underfoot,
and the vault overhead, and gilded to his right and to his left the
two viscous
walls of the passage. Stupefied, he turned round.

Behind him, in the portion of the passage which he had just
passed through,
at a distance which appeared to him immense, piercing the
dense obscurity,
flamed a sort of horrible star which had the air of surveying
him.
It was the gloomy star of the police which was rising in the
sewer.
In the rear of that star eight or ten forms were moving about in
a confused way,
black, upright, indistinct, horrible.
Armilla from Invisible Cities
by Italo Calvino
Whether Armilla is like this because it is unfinished or because
it has been de-
molished, whether the cause is some enchantment or only a
whim, I do not
know. The fact remains that it has no walls, no ceilings, no
doors: it has nothing
that makes it seem a city, eept the water pipes that rise
vertically where the
houses should be and spread out horizontally where the doors
should be: a for-
est of pipes that end in taps, showers, spouts, overBows.
Against the sky a
lavabo’s white stands out, or a bathtub, or some other porcelain,
like late fruit
still hanging from the boughs. You would think the plumbers
had finished their
job and gone away before the bricklayers arrived; or else their

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