Category: Translations

Propertius loathed makeup and silky stuff; beauty for him was strictly in the buff — the world’s body, stripped of appearance, nude. He thought that good, maybe the only good. Yet a desire for makeup might obsess us if the face underneath it is Duessa’s.

I am most interested in revealing what is hidden. I think that when we perceive the inner aspects of something, we are able to glimpse, if only partially, its original, primordial form. It’s not the sound of the ocean we hear in the seashell: it’s a reflection of the object’s internal music.

Beauty is mystical in the strict sense — that is, it is knowable by direct experience that inspires awe and fascination, without necessarily being susceptible to definition — and also involves the notion of limit. Only that which comes to an end is beautiful.

Three handsome, rich young princes, one named Felibien, another, Roland, and the third, Aymeril, were travelling on horseback through all the countries of the world, followed by a multitude of servants and wagons loaded with their baggage. A chance meeting at an inn had made them friends, and they set off together. Why were they travelling?

For some, the city’s beauty lies in its geography, in its rivers and hills; for others, it is the monasteries, palaces, and bell towers. For me, it lies in the shades of people, real and imagined, who stroll around Patriarch’s Pond in June, when the nights are clear and cool, and puffs of pukh (cottonwood seed) float out across the water.