Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

FUTURE, n.
That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.

CABBAGE, n.
A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.

CARTESIAN, adj.
Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of the celebrated dictum, Cogito ergo sum -- whereby he was pleased to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence. The dictum might be improved, however, thus: Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;" as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.

CONSERVATIVE, n.
A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.

CURIOSITY, n.
An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.



http://www.alcyone.com/max/lit/devils/c.html

The Conqueror Worm (EAP)


Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly-
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!

That motley drama- oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!- it writhes!- with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

Out- out are the lights- out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

Why is it not possible to shout of Peggy Noonan and her book about Ronald Reagan, "When Character Was King":

"We have put them living in the tomb!" (?)


--Z

Aw haven't read it as of yet, though los gusanos have certainly and thankfully conquered the Gipper by now....I imagine his big simian smile and hayseed bravado are not very appealing at present

Bierce and Poe may be a bit hokey for some ( those people-that think literature is a matter of reading tea leaves or new-age bongo drumming) but their morose and somber perspectives should be considered, and perhaps applied to fiction or essays ....Baudelaire as we might recall worshipped Poe....

.whatever happened to history or to tragedy--even the tragedy of common people.....We exist in a land of Albert Speer-like malls where a hummer-driving yuppie could simply run over a person and not remember it the next morning; i'm for putting the bourgeois in los campos

I love Bierce. I've always considered myself an optimist, but it's hard not to love the guy.

Hi beat fan--Have you read any of Bierce's stories, such as Chickamauga or Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge? His fiction is to me not as entertaining as his humor and journalism, but some of it is quite good.