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Heavenly and common love in greek lit
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La Douleur Exquise
La Douleur Exquise (French): The heart-wrenching pain of wanting someone you can’t have.
A very long time ago when the Earth was still the point at the center of the universe and humans lived in a more ambiguous manner, there was a god, shunned from his golden home and family in the sky. A god who was forced to watch over the lost souls of mortal men as they flowed down the river Styx, washed away of their former glory and power, humbled by death in a way that they never could be in life. The god sat amid his wealth and destruction and loneliness, bitterness was the only companion for king on his melancholy throne.
It was a fine day in the meadows outside of Sozopolis when the king of death first saw her. A goddess opposite
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For the love he felt for life became less vibrant than the love he would feel for her. Though wilted, the goddess put up her fight, whispered words that seemed wrong on her plush, innocent lips. She was a force to be reckoned with, and despite her lack of life, she still brought something whole to his throne of melancholy.
Love makes you want someone to be happy, it makes you want to be selfless and good and serving. It’s an obnoxious feeling, the god would soon learn. He wanted to make her golden, he wanted to make her laugh and sing and bring forth the riches of the Earth again. And so, with a heavy heart he let her go. Released her as if she were a firefly he’d been keeping. He let her go so she would not have to live with him in his suffering.
The goddess went back to her world up above, and she tried to become one with her element once more, yet her heart, oh her fickle little heart, yearned illogically and painfully for the cold man she had lived with in captivity. As the sunshine warmed her skin and the earth squashed under her and the sweet nectar of the holy rain fell on her tongue and her soul was returned to the fertile land she so carefully had cultivated at the beginning of Earth and the age of man, her heart became frigid. Her eyes became hard, her tongue once golden and fluid became silver and sharp. The heart yearns in a way that any mortal or immortal man finds peculiar, for the heart loves sometimes without
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The six seeds would keep her alive and vibrant with the force of the warrior’s might for six months. Six months she could live under the Earth with him, she could hold and cherish him, he could live for six months. Six months she could be his Queen, his lover, his wife.
There were six seeds he did not feed her, for the six months she would leave him to make the Earth bloom and the sky warm with her spirit. And after those months in the sun, after the time making the land of Greece prosper with her green hands, she would come back to him, always come back to his halls echoing of death and melancholy. In her absence, the sky would turn colder and grey and the world would experience a time of winter.
It was in her absence that the god of death would be lonely and in pain, but that was always a feeling quickly abandoned when she came home, when he could have her for his time. And so, the god who was shunned from his golden home and family in the sky, found himself sitting on a throne of light and
Between the covers of the book Night is the story of a boy who had to endure the constant threat of death. He had to watch as other perished, family, friends, strangers, everyone. Yet his God had done nothing. He remained unmoved and silent. How could a God he was taught to look upon when anguished allow such savagery to
must die." God spoke to her and she acted upon the support of a loved one.
The question of why bad things happen to good people has perplexed and angered humans throughout history. The most common remedy to ease the confusion is to discover the inflicter of the undeserved suffering and direct the anger at them: the horror felt about the Holocaust can be re-directed in the short term by transforming Adolf Hitler into Lucifer and vilifying him, and, in the long term, can be used as a healing device when it is turned into education to assure that such an atrocity is never repeated. What, however, can be done with the distasteful emotions felt about the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Surely the citizens of those two cities did not themselves directly provoke the government of the United States to deserve the horror of a nuclear attack. Can it be doubted that their sufferings were undeserved and should cause deep sorrow, regret, and anger? Yet for the citizens of the United States to confront these emotions they must also confront the failings of their own government. A similar problem is found in two works of literature, Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound and the book of Job found in the Tanakh. In each of these works a good man is seen to be suffering at the hand of his god; Prometheus is chained to a rock by Zeus who then sends an eagle to daily eat Prometheus' liver while Job is made destitute and brought to endure physical pain through an agreement between God~ and Satan. To examine the travails of these two men is to discover two vastly different concepts of the relationship between god and man.
In romantic words, the poet expresses how much she does think of love. She state it clear that she will not trade love for peace in times of anguish.
For the most part of the poem she states how she believes that it is Gods calling, [Then ta’en away unto eternity] but in other parts of the poem she eludes to the fact that she feels more like her granddaughter was stolen from her [or sigh thy days so soon were terminate]. One of the main beliefs in these times was that when someone died it was their time; God needed them and had a better plan. Both poets found peace in the idea that God had the children now and it was part of the plan, but are also deeply saddened and used poetry as a coping mechanism.
It is easy to place the blame on fate or God when one is encumbered by suffering. It is much harder to find meaning in that pain, and harvest it into motivation to move forward and grow from the grief. It is imperative for one to understand one’s suffering as a gateway to new wisdom and development; for without suffering, people cannot find true value in happiness nor can they find actual meaning to their lives. In both Antigone and The Holy Bible there are a plethora of instances that give light to the quintessential role suffering plays in defining life across cultures. The Holy Bible and Sophocles’ Antigone both mirror the dichotomous reality in which society is situated, underlining the necessity of both joy and suffering in the world.
Beloved, she was exactly as her name. A spirit that came and left just like the wind. Although she caused a lot of broken hearts and pain. She never meant to hurt anyone, she just wanted rest and the only way to receive that rest was by revisiting the woman that caused her pain and murdered her.
love and beauty, would seem more apt. Nevertheless; indeed, from that moment on, Athena has
Perhaps one of the main reasons the Epic of Gilgamesh is so popular and has lasted such a long time, is because it offers insight into the human concerns of people four thousand years ago, many of which are still relevant today. Some of these human concerns found in the book that are still applicable today include: the fear and concerns people have in relation to death, overwhelming desires to be immortal, and the impact a friendship has on a person’s life. It does not take a great deal of insight into The Epic of Gilgamesh for a person to locate these themes in the story, and even less introspection to relate to them.
Nature, that washed her hands in milk” can be divided structurally into two halves; the first three stanzas constitute the first half, and the last three stanzas make up the second half. Each stanza in the first half corresponds to a stanza in the second half. The first stanza describes the temperament of Nature, who is, above all, creative. This first stanza of the first half corresponds to stanza four, the first stanza in the second half of the poem. Stanza four divulges the nature of Time, who, unlike Nature, is ultimately a destroyer. Time is introduced as the enemy of Nature, and Ralegh points out that not only does Nature “despise” Time, she has good reason for it (l. 19). Time humiliates her: he “rudely gives her love the lie,/Makes Hope a fool, and Sorrow wise” (20-21). The parallel between the temperaments of Nature and Time is continued in stanzas two and five. Stanza two describes the mistress that Nature makes for Love. This mistress, who is made of “snow and silk” instead of earth, has features that are easily broken (3). Each external feature is individually fragile: her eyes are made of light, which cannot even be touched, her breath is as delicate as a violet, and she has “lips of jelly” (7-8). Her demeanor is unreliable, as well; it is made “Only of wantonness and wit” (12). It is no surprise that all of the delicate beauty Nature creates in stanza two is destroyed by Time in stanza five. Time “dims, discolors, and destroys” the creation of Nature, feature by feature (25-26). Stanzas three and six complete the parallel. In the third stanza, the mistress is made, but in her is “a heart of stone” (15). Ralegh points out that her charm o...
When she approached the my statue she sighed happily and uttered, “My, this is a beautiful temple. It is a shame it is wasted on Athena for I obtain more beauty than her, perhaps one day people will build an even grander temple to my beauty.”
At a glance, the poem seems simplistic – a detailed observance of nature followed by an invitation to wash a “dear friend’s” hair. Yet this short poem highlights Bishop’s best poetic qualities, including her deliberate choice in diction, and her emotional restraint. Bishop progresses along with the reader to unfold the feelings of both sadness and joy involved in loving a person that will eventually age and pass away. The poem focuses on the intersection of love and death, an intersection that goes beyond gender and sexuality to make a far-reaching statement about the nature of being
At a glance, the poem seems simplistic – a detailed observance of nature followed by an invitation to wash a “dear friend’s” hair. Yet this short poem highlights Bishop’s best poetic qualities, including her deliberate choice in diction, and her emotional restraint. Bishop progresses along with the reader to unfold the feelings of both sadness and joy involved in loving a person that will eventually age and pass away. The poem focuses on the intersection of love and death, an intersection that goes beyond gender and sexuality to make a far-reaching statement about the nature of being
Little did the world know before the mid-1800s that an expansive, detailed work of literature from the Third Dynasty of Ur was about to be discovered. Described as the world’s first great work of literature, The Epic of Gilgamesh is normally thought an applicable document to portray the first inklings of humanity. As history tells any careful reader, clearly this is not the case. The Epic of Gilgamesh and the characters within the epic poem are instead descriptive representations of a certain time period documented once for lore. This instance and the epic story brings forth many questions: what does it mean to be a god? A friend? Most importantly, what does it mean
To view the links that are instilled between mortals, immortals, and fate in The Iliad, it is worthwhile to examine each on its own to observe how they connect. The characteristics of the three are inherently unique in relation to each other, though in some areas there is overlap. Man is defined as a mortal, someone who can die from old age and disease. Products from mortal and immortal procreation, such as the hero Achilles, fall into a sort of category all their own, but Achilles himself suggests that he would die from old age if he were to return home (9:502-505). In this weakness of the flesh they differ from the immortal gods, who cannot die from natural causes. Nevertheless, the gods share the imperfections of man: disloyalty, deceit, anger, and even lust. They see themselves as above man, and yet their actions are often as selfi...