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“Is not the most erotic portion of a body where the garment gapes? In perversion (which is the realm of textual pleasure) there are no “erogenous zones” (a foolish expression, besides); it is intermittence, as psychoanalysis has so rightly stated, which is erotic: the intermittence of skin flashing between two articles of clothing (trousers and sweater), between two edges (the open-necked shirt, the glove and the sleeve); it is this flash itself which seduces, or rather: the staging of an appearance-as-disappearance.”

— Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

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“Keats’s characters are always eating. Many critics have noticed that Keats’s sexual experiences are accompanied by food; from the ‘strawberries’ he eats while chasing the nymphs of 'Sleep and Poetry,’ to the luscious and quite unnecessary spread that Porphyro puts out for Madeline in The Eve of St. Agnes, to the 'roots of relish sweet / And honey wild, and manna dew’ the fairy enchantress offers her Knight. But in truth eating does not just accompany the mild sexual encounters of Keats’s verse: it introduces them–eating always comes before bodily contact, and it often ends up compensating for the pleasures Keats’s people hardly ever experience. In The Eve, the only place in Keats’s verse where sexuality goes beyond kisses and caresses, Porphyro and Madeline do not touch the dainties set out for them. Sex provides its own pleasure; they do not need the proffered pleasures of the palate. Everyone else has to eat.”

— James Najarian, excerpt from Victorian Keats: Manliness, Sexuality, and Desire

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“Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music? Do I wake or sleep?”

Manuscript of ’Ode to a Nightingale’ by John Keats

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“To know the night is a lot like knowing poetry, and knowing poetry requires what Keats called “negative capability,” the capacity for “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” To know the night means having the clarity that some things are and should be and always will be hidden, for the night has been, or is, or should always be, the time of lovers, revolutionaries, and other conspirators. The night world is that which should be, or once always was, veiled.”

— Anne Boyer, from her essay “The Fall of Night”, Lapham’s Quarterly, Volume XII, Number 1 | Winter 2019

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— Pale fire, Vladimir Nabokov

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Introduction to The Iliad, Emily Wilson

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A Bridal Couple, oil on panel, Southern Germany circa 1470

Love is not honorable, unless it is based on equality.

Original Old French: Amur n’est pruz se n’est égals

Marie de France (Equitan, 137), trans. Glyn Burgess and Keith Busby

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Mirages: The unexpurgated diary of Anaïs Nin

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"He liked the infernos of love, love mixed with great sufferings and great obstacles. He wanted to kill monsters and overcome enemies and struggle like some Don Quixote."

— Anaïs Nin, "Elena" from Delta of Venus

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"Talking together is a form of intercourse. You and I exist together in all the delirious countries of the sexual world. You draw me into the marvelous. Your smile keeps a mesmeric flow."

— Anaïs Nin, "Elena" from Delta of Venus

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One day as I was sitting alone in my study surrounded by books on all kinds of subjects, devoting myself to literary studies, my usual habit, my mind dwelt at length on the weighty opinions of various authors whom I had studied for a long time. …I remembered wanting to examine this book by Mathéolus. I started to read it and went on for a little while… and after browsing here and there and reading to the end, I put it down in order to turn my attention to more elevated and useful study. But just the sight of this book, even though it was of no authority, made me wonder how it happened that so many different men–and learned men among them–have been and are so inclined to express both in speaking and in their treatises and writings so many wicked insults about women and their behavior. …They all concur in one conclusion: that the behavior of women is inclined to and full of every vice. Thinking deeply about these matters, I began to examine my character and conduct as a natural woman and, similarly, I considered other women whose company I frequently kept, princesses, great ladies, women of the middle and lower classes… hoping that I could judge impartially and in good conscience whether the testimony of so many notable men could be true. To the best of my knowledge, no matter how long I confronted or dissected the problem, I could not see or realize how their claims could be true when compared to the natural behavior and character of women. Yet I still argued vehemently against women, saying that it would be impossible that so many famous men–such solemn scholars, possessed of such deep and great understanding, so clear-sighted in all things, as it seemed–could have spoken falsely on so many occasions that I could hardly find a book on morals where, even before I had read it in its entirety, I did not find several chapters or certain sections attacking women, no matter who the author was. …And so I relied more on the judgement of others than on what I myself felt and knew. I was so transfixed in this line of thinking for such a long time that it seemed as if I were in a stupor. …And I finally decided that God formed a vile creature when He made woman, and I wondered how such a worthy artisan could have deigned to make such an abominable work which, from what they say, is the vessel as well as the refuge and abode of every evil and vice. As I was thinking this, a great unhappiness and sadness welled up in my heart, for I detested myself and the entire feminine sex, as though we were monstrosities in nature. And in my lament I spoke these words:

“…Look at all these accusations which have ben judged, decided, and concluded against women. I do not know how to understand this repugnance. If it is so, fair Lord God, that in fact so many abominations abound in the female sex, for You Yourself say that the testimony of two or three witnesses lends credence, why shall I not doubt that this is true? Alas, God, why did You not let me be born in the world as a man, so that all my inclinations would be to serve You better, and so that I would not stray in anything and would be as perfect as a man is said to be? But since Your kindness has not been extended to me, then forgive my negligence in Your service, most fair Lord God, and may it not displease You, for the servant who receives fewer gifts from his lord is less obliged in his service.” I spoke these words to God in my lament and a great deal more for a very long time in sad reflection, and in my folly I considered myself most unfortunate because God had made me inhabit a female body in this world. 

…So occupied with these painful thoughts, my head bowed in shame, my eyes filled with tears, leaning on the pommel of my chair’s armrest, I suddenly saw a ray of light fall on my lap, as though it were the sun. I shuddered then, as if wakened from sleep, for I was sitting in a shadow where the sun could not have shone at that hour. And as I lifted my head to see where this light was coming from, I saw three crowned ladies standing before me, and the splendor of their bright faces shone on me and throughout the entire room. 

…Then she who was the first of the three smiled and began to speak, “Dear daughter, do not be afraid, for we have not come here to harm or trouble you but to console you, for we have taken pity on your distress, and we have come to bring you out of the ignorance which so blinds your own intellect that you shun what you know for a certainty and believe what you do not know or see or recognize except by virtue of many strange opinions. …Fair daughter, have you lost all sense? Have you forgotten that when fine gold is tested in the furnace, it does not change or vary in strength but becomes purer the more it is hammered and handled in different ways? Do you not know that the best things are the most debated and the most discussed?

“…Dear daughter… there is another greater and even more special reason for our coming which you will learn from our speeches: in fact we have come to vanquish from the world the same error into which you had fallen, so that from now on, ladies and all valiant women may have a refuge and defense against the various assailants, those ladies who have been abandoned for so long, exposed like a field without a surrounding hedge, without finding a champion to afford them an adequate defense, notwithstanding those noble men who are required by order of law to protect them, who by negligence and apathy have allowed them to be mistreated. …Now it is time for their just cause to be taken from Pharaoh’s hands, and for this reason, we three ladies whom you see here, moved by pity, have come to you to announce a particular edifice built like a city wall, strongly constructed and well founded, which has been predestined and established by our aid and counsel for you to build, where no one will reside except all ladies of fame and women worthy of praise.”

Christine de Pizan, from The Book of the City of Ladies

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Source de pleur, rivière de tristesse,  Flux de douleur, mer d’amertume pleine,  M’environnent, et noient en grande peine Mon pauvre coeur qui sent trop sa détresse. 

Christine de Pizan

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“There is evidence that not only English men, but women, also valued Christine’s works. Susan Groag Bell has shown that Elizabeth I and her brother Edward VI each inherited a set of tapestries entitled ‘The Cite of Ladies’ from their father. Elizabeth was fluent in French and she had access to Christine’s manuscripts in the royal library; in addition, Brian Anslay, the English translator of the City of Ladies, served at Henry VIII’s court; after Catherine’s fall, Anslay remained in service to the new queen, Anne Boleyn, who would have been interested in the City of Ladies because of her years in France and her interest in French literature.”

— Antigone’s Example: Early Modern Women’s Political Writing in Times of Civil War (Suzuki, Mihoko)

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i think part of what gets lost when people stress the importance of reading is that it's not purely about imagination or living in someone else's (fictional) head for a while (though this is important). no one is trying to force feed people anna karenina or all of dickens. no one is waiting in line to make you feel stupid or shame you for not liking / being intimidated by whatever assigned reading you were given at 15 and reliving your worst classroom experiences.

all anyone is asking you is that you DON'T outsource your ability to make sense of things to someone else just because it's convenient!!!!!!

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Things That Cannot Be Compared.

Summer and winter. Night and day. Rain and sunshine. Youth and age. A person’s laughter and his anger. Black and white. Love and hatred. The little indigo plant and the great philodendron. Rain and mist.

When one has stopped loving somebody, one feels that he has become someone else, even though he is still the same person.

— Sei Shōnagon, from Pillow Book

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That passion, born in an instant, had taken imperishable root; I did not even think of trying to tear it up, I realised so fully that it was impossible. [She] had taken complete possession of me; a single glance had sufficed to change me; she had breathed her will into me; I no longer lived in myself, but in her and through her. I did a thousand foolish things; I kissed the spot on my hand that she had touched, and I repeated her name hours at a time.

Théophile Gautier, "La Morte Amoureuse" from Théophile Gautier's short stories (trans. George Burnham Ives)

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“Earlier, she had asked about a book I was reading, and I explained that it was a modern retelling of a Greek myth. I said that for a long time, I had loved these stories. In part, it was because they had an eternal metaphoric quality that you could use to speak for almost anything in life: love, death, beauty, grief, fate, wars, violence, family, oaths, funerals. I said it was almost like how painters had once used the camera obscura: by looking indirectly at the thing they wanted to focus on, they were sometimes able to see it even more clearly than with their own eyes.”

Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow