Phoen-IX

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Fenix Arabie avis dicta quod colorem feniceum\ habeat, vel quod sit in toto orbe singularis et\ unica. Hec quingentos ultra annos vivens, dum\ se viderit senuisse, collectis aromatum virgultis, ro\ gum sibi instruit, et conversa ad radium solis alarum\ plausu voluntarium sibi incendium nutrit, seque urit.\

[in Aberdeen Bestiary, folio 56r, séx XII]

Tu Fénix, tu do amor doce traslado,
Companheiro em meus males peregrino,
Pois se em fogo te acaba o teu destino,
Em chamas me atormenta o meu cuidado
Tu te podes queixar de um triste fado,
Eu me queixarei de um deos mínimo,
Pois tu por desgraçado, e eu por fino
Acabas encendido, eu abrasado.
Mas oh, que as tuas ânsias são pequenas
À vista do martírio, em que discorro,
Porque renasces em morrendo apenas;
E servindo-te as penas de socorro.
Tu renasces do fogo em tendo penas,
Eu porque muito peno, em chamas morro.

(Francisco de Vasconcelos Coutinho, Comparando o seu amor ao Fénix,
em Fénix Renascida III, p. 229)

THE SISTERS

THERE was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke.
Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and
studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had
found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was
dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the
darkened blind for I knew that two candles must be set at the head
of a corpse. He had often said to me: "I am not long for this
world," and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were
true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to
myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my
ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in
the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some
maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed
to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.

Valentine's Law

[Rudolph Valentino and Vilma Banky in "The Son of the Sheik" (1926)]

My funny valentine
Sweet comic valentine
You make me smile with my heart
Your looks are laughable
Unphotographable
Yet youre my favourite work of art

Is your figure less than greek
Is your mouth a little weak
When you open it to speak
Are you smart?

But dont change a hair for me
Not if you care for me
Stay little valentine stay
Each day is valentines day

Is your figure less than greek
Is your mouth a little weak
When you open it to speak
Are you smart?

But dont you change one hair for me
Not if you care for me
Stay little valentine stay
Each day is valentines day

[Rogers and Hart, 1937]

La princesse insensible

(Ficus carica L.)

VISION 7 – THE DEVIL

Then I saw a burning light, as large and as high as a mountain, divided at its summit as if into many tongues. And there stood in the presence of this light a multitude of white-clad people, before whom what seemed like a screen of translucent crystal had been placed, reaching from their breasts to their feet. And before that multitude, as if in a road, there lay on its back a monster shaped like a worm, wondrously large and long, which aroused an indescribable sense of horror and rage. On its left stood a kind of market-place, which displayed human wealth and worldly delights and various sorts of merchandise; and some people were running through it very fast and not buying anything, while others were walking slowly and stopping both to sell and to buy. Now that worm was black and bristly, covered with ulcers and pustules, and it was divided into five regions from the head down through the belly to its feet, like stripes. One was green, one white, one red, one yellow and one black; and they were full of deadly poison. But its head had been so crushed that the left side of its jawbone was dislocated. Its eyes were bloody on the surface and burning within; its ears were round and bristly : its nose and mouth were those of a viper, its hands human, its feet a viper's feet, and its tail short and horrible.

And around its neck a chain was riveted, which also bound its hands and feet and this chain was firmly fastened to a rock in the abyss, confining it so that it could not move about as its wicked will desired. Many flames came forth from its mouth, dividing into four parts: One part ascended to the clouds, another breathed forth among secular people, another among spiritual people, and the last descended into the abyss. And the flame that sought the clouds was opposing the people who wanted to get to Heaven And I saw three groups of these. One was close to the clouds, one in the middle space between the clouds and the earth, and one moved along near the earth; and all were shouting repeatedly, "Let us get to Heaven!" But they were whirled hither and thither by that flame; some did not waver, some barely kept their balance and some fell to the earth but then rose again and started toward Heaven. The flame that breathed forth among secular people burned some of them so that they were hideously blackened and others it transfixed so that it could move them anywhere it wanted. Some escaped from the flame and moved toward those who sought Heaven, reiterating shouts of "O you faithful, give us help!" But others remained transfixed . Meanwhile, the flame that breathed forth among spiritual people concealed them in obscurity; but I saw them in six categories. For some of them were cruelly injured by the flame's fury; but when it could not injure one of them, it burningly breathed on them the deadly poison that flowed from the worm's head to its feet, either green or white or red or yellow or black. But the flame that sought the abyss contained in itself diverse torments for those who had worshipped Satan in place of God, not washed by the font of baptism or knowing the light of truth and faith. And I saw sharp arrows whistling loudly from its mouth, and black smoke exhaling from its breast, and a burning fluid boiling up from its loins, and a hot whirlwind blowing from its navel, and the uncleanness of frogs issuing from its bowels; all of which affected human beings with grave disquiet. And the hideous and foul-smelling vapor that came out of it infected many people with its own perversity. But behold, a great multitude of people came, shining brightly; they forcefully trod the worm underfoot and severely tormented it, but could not be injured by its flames or its poison. And I heard again the voice from Heaven, saying to me: 1. God strengthens the faithful so that the Devil cannot conquer them

God, Who disposes all things justly and rightly, calls His faithful people to the glory of the celestial inheritance; but the ancient deceiver lurks in ambush and tries to hinder them by using all his wicked arts against them But he is conquered by them and is confounded as his presumption deserves for they possess the celestial country, and he suffers the horrors of Hell. Therefore, you see a burning light, as large and as high as a mountain, divided at its summit as if into many tongues. This is the justice of God. which burns in the faith of believers, displaying the greatness of His power, sanctity and glory, and wonderfully declaring in that glory the diverse gifts of the Holy Spirit.

[from Scivias (1151) - Hildegard of Bingen - trans. by Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop]

100

[Jean-Paul Belmondo dans "L'homme de Rio" de Philippe de Broca, 1964]

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La source

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1726 – Recebemos a notícia no “Aquilégio Medicinal” (1º. Inventário das águas minerais portuguesas), da autoria do Dr. Francisco da Fonseca Henriques, da existência de um “(...) olho de agoa quente, a que chamão o Banho ...”

Apesar do aproveitamento terapêutico do “Banho” se verificar somente meio século mais tarde, já nesta altura, o Dr. Francisco da Fonseca Henriques refere-se ao olho de água quente como sendo uma água terapêutica, com poderes medicinais.

1775 – Data a partir da qual se terá usado o “Banho” para curar doenças de pele. Na “Notícia dos Banhos de Luso”, da autoria do Dr. António Augusto da Costa Simões, constatamos que a descoberta das virtudes terapêutas da água deve-se “(...) a um médico daqueles sítios, assistente na Lameira de S. Pedro, José António de Morais, clínico distinto, que dalli foi chamado ao Paço, e curara duma molestia grave a Srª D. Maria I que o brindou com o hábito de Cristo, com o privilégio da Casa Real, e com as honras e ordenado de Lente da Universidade.
Foi este médico que para ali encaminhou os primeiros doentes em 1775, pouco mais ao menos; fez os primeiros ensaios das molestias cutaneas.
1779 - “Fr. Christovão dos Reis, carmelita descalço, e boticario no convento de Braga” escreve sobre as aguas dos banhos de Luso na sua obra intitulada “Reflexões experimentaes methodico botanicas”.

Khat-Khat

Para desafogar o encargo festivo que crucifica o Gag vou partilhar umas graças truz-truz que engendrei à saída do cinema. Aqui vão elas:

1.

Truz-truz!
Quem é?
Somos as netas.
De quem?
Do Mário.
Ah, as Mário netas.

2.

Truz-truz!
Quem é?
Sou uma fã.
De quem?
Do Tochas, uma fã Tochas.

3.

Didascália: será aplicado um sotaque brasileiro ao visitante;

Truz-truz!
Quem é?
Somos os caras.
E são bons?
Não! Somos más caras.

Tal & Qual

[Rogier van der Weyden, The Magdalene Reading, c. 1445, óleo, transferido de madeira para mogno, 62 x 55 cm, National Gallery, London]

"(...) et puis tout change à nouveau calme plat sphère éclat transparence en haut des étoiles deux heures du matin je fais un signe de crois en traversant les rosiers du jardin plante des pieds nus pas de bruit surtout léger souffle retenu en soi loin de soi un signe de croix oui comme ça dans l'air noir couronnant le tout qui s'en va c'est le signe qui va rester suspendu là maintenant pétales ici pas de doute bouche ouverte signature ouverte soleil coeur point coeur point de coeur crâné sous la croix et voilà tout se renverse d'un coup à nouveau le jour se lève enfin dans sa pointe océan poumons clé hautbois le bleu revient il revient le bleu pas croyable il est là buée dans le rouge en gris jeune en bas vox tubae vox suavi vox éclats petits mots mutants dans l'échelle et elle est là une fois encore dressée mon échelle bien légère et triste et bien ferme très joyeuse et vive et bien ferme veni sancte spiritus tempus perfectum tactus ciel et terre pleine de l'énergie en joie d'autrefois (...)"

[Philippe Sollers, Paradis 2, Gallimard, 1986] ***

The rebirth of the pool

Ted Gioia, one of the writers who has given significant attention to cool jazz, writes "The cool aesthetic has always found a few lonely champions in the jazz arena--fascinating individuals who have provided an alternative to the dominant hot stylists. As such, the stand as double outsiders in the already counterculture world of jazz." The very term "cool jazz" conjures up images of martinis, bachelor pads outfitted with the latest stereo equipment, and sophisticated, detached chicks dressed in the latest fashions. The word cool denotes a detachment, a less emotional approach to the music. In short, cool jazz is something of a college-educated form of jazz, often influenced by other musical forms such as classical music. Cool jazz features arrangements that are generally more complex than those found in bop, where the head is played, followed by solos, then played again. Often complex harmonies were played behind the solos in cool jazz--it was much more a style that emphasized the composer and arranger.

[in Brief History of Jazz: part 5 @ www.jazzitude.com]

- / + 8

onde estavas há 20 anos?

Galerie des Chimères

"Daniel de hoc ultimo iudicio sic prophetat, ut Antichristum quoque prius uenturum esse praenuntiet atque ad aeternum regnum sanctorum perducat narrationem suam. Cum enim uisione prophetica quattuor bestias significantes quattuor regna uidisset, ipsumque quartum a quodam rege superatum, qui Antichristus agnoscitur, et post haec aeternum regnum filii hominis, qui intellegitur Christus: Horruit, inquit, spiritus meus, ego Daniel, in habitudine mea, et uisus capitis mei conturbabant me. (...) Ego Daniel; multum cogitationes meae conturbabant me, et forma mea inmutata est super me, et uerbum in corde meo conseruaui. Quattuor illa regna exposuerunt quidam Assyriorum, Persarum, Macedonum et Romanorum. Quam uero conuenienter id fecerint, qui nosse desiderant, legant presbyteri Hieronymi librum in Danielem satis erudite diligenterque conscriptum."

[AUGUSTINI (13 Novembris, 354 Anno Domini - 28 Augusti, 430 A.D.)
DE CIVITATE DEI LIBER XX: XXIII]

***

[Jacques Tardi - Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec (1976)]

Aletrisme ou Kantisme?

"A flagrante ausência de cultura filosófica e geral dos alegres propulsores deste modelo de debilidade mental que se chama arte abstracta, abstracção-criação, arte não-figurativa, etc. é uma das coisas mais autenticamente agradáveis do ponto de vista da desolação intelectual e "moderna" da nossa época. Kantistas retardados, pegajosos de secções de ouro escatológicas, continuam a querer oferecer-nos, sobre o optimismo novo do seu papel couché, essa sopa de estética abstracta, a qual em verdade de realidade ainda é pior do que essas espécies de sopas de aletria fria colossalmente sórdidas do neotomismo, das quais até os gatos mais convulsivamente esfomeados não querem aproximar-se. Se, segundo eles, as formas e as cores têm um valor estético em si mesmas, fora do seu valor "representativo" e do seu significado anedótico, como podem resolver e explicar a imagem paranóica clássica, de dupla figuração e simultânea, que pode oferecer sem dificuldade uma imagem estritamente imitativa, ineficaz do seu ponto de vista e, ao mesmo tempo, sem qualquer alteração, uma imagem válida e rica plasticamente? É o caso dessa diminuta figura ultra-anedótica dum negrinho fulgurantem, deitado e de estilo Meissonier, o qual, ao mesmo tempo, olhado verticalmente não é senão a sombra muito rica e mesmo plasticamente suculenta dum nariz pompeiano muito respeitável pelo seu grau de abstracção-criação! A genial experiência de Picasso não faz mais do que provar-lhes, por outro lado, o carácter incondicional material, inelutável e apoteósico, em relação com as precisões físicas e geométricas dos sistemas estéticos, dos sistemas biológicos e frenéticos do objecto concreto."
[Salvador Dali, A conquista do irracional, em: "Mito trágico do Angelus de Millet", trad. Célia Henriques e Vítor Silva Tavares, & etc, Lisboa, 1998]

Ilus: Piet Mondrian, Composição com cinzento e castanho claro (1918), óleo sobre tela, 80,2 X 49,9 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas.

And now for something completely different: Le Lettrisme.

Flowers of Evil

[Samuel Fuller cameo in: Jean-Luc Godard, "Pierrot le fou" (1965)]

Destruction

The Demon is always moving about at my side;
He floats about me like an impalpable air;
I swallow him, I feel him burn my lungs
And fill them with an eternal, sinful desire.

Sometimes, knowing my deep love for Art, he assumes
The form of a most seductive woman,
And, with pretexts specious and hypocritical,
Accustoms my lips to infamous philtres.

He leads me thus, far from the sight of God,
Panting and broken with fatigue, into the midst
Of the plains of Ennui, endless and deserted,

And thrusts before my eyes full of bewilderment,
Dirty filthy garments and open, gaping wounds,
And all the bloody instruments of Destruction!

[William Aggeler (Charles Baudelaire), The Flowers of Evil
(Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)]

S longo

[O integral de f(x) de a a b é a área por cima do eixo dos x e por baixo da curva y=f(x),
menos a área por baixo do eixo dos x e por cima da curva, para o x no intervalo [a,b].]

The rules for long S:

• short s is always used at the end of a word
• short s is always used before an apostrophe (e.g. clos'd, us'd, and in French books words like s'il and s'eſt)
• short s is always used before 'f' (e.g. ſatisfaction, misfortune, transfuſe, transfix, transfer, succeſsful)
• short s is sometimes used before 'b' (e.g. husband, Shaftsbury)
• short s is sometimes used before 'k' (e.g. ask, risk, skin, skill)
• long s is used before a hyphen at line break (e.g. neceſ-ſary, pleaſ-ed), even when it would normally be a short s (e.g. Shaftſ-bury in a book where Shaftsbury is normal)
• long s is maintained in abbreviations such as Geneſ. for Geneſis

[in: The Babelstone]

Em matemática usa-se ainda hoje um último avatar do s longo como símbolo do integral: . O co-inventor do conceito de soma integral, Leibniz utilizou a primeira letra da expressão em latim, summa, (« soma »), escrito ſumma. Na verdade, Leibniz teria feito este uso em privado no dia 29 de Outubro de 1675, mas o primeiro uso público foi apenas feito em Junho de 1686 no seu artigo De Geometria, publicado nos Acta Eruditorum.

Cap i cua

[Studio View: "After Picasso," 2006, by Devorah Sperber, 5,024 spools of thread, stainless steel ball chain and hanging apparatus, clear acrylic viewing sphere, metal stand (104"-122" h x 100” w x 60”- 72"d); baseado no retrato de Gertrude Stein (1906), por Pablo Picasso (25.10.1881 - 8.4.1973)]

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

  101, 111, 121, 131, 141, 151, 161, 171, 181, 191, 202, 212, 222,
 232, 242, 252, 262, 272, 282, 292, 303, 313, 323, 333, 343, 353,
 363, 373, 383, 393, 404, 414, 424, 434, 444, 454, 464, 474, 484,
 494, 505, 515, 525, 535, 545, 555, 565, 575, 585, 595, 606, 616,
 626, 636, 646, 656, 666, 676, 686, 696, 707, 717, 727, 737, 747,
 757, 767, 777, 787, 797, 808, 818, 828, 838, 848, 858, 868, 878,
 888, 898, 909, 919, 929, 939, 949, 959, 969, 979, 989, 999, 1001

 [Números palindrómicos]

Le bruissement de la légende

[Jacques Lacan respondendo ao seu genro Jacques-Alain Miller no programa
"Psychanalyse", realizado por Benoît Jacquot, ORTF, 1973]

Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

"If the truth of the incarnation was proved in the mortification of the penis would not the truth of the Anastasis, the resurrection, be proved by its erection? Would this not be the body's best show of power?" Leo Steinberg [o]

Man of sorrows 1532 Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent
Maerten van Heemskerck