armuse - Tumblr blog

[armuse]

“Love has four letters; so does life. And life is too short to not love.”

-ar.muse

[armuse]

when Gulzar said 'Aankhein thi jo keh gayi sab kuch, Lafz hote to mukar gaye hote' and when Nizar Qabbani said 'I want to discover a way to love you without words' and when Javed Akhtar said 'Kisi zubaan mein bhi woh lafz hi nahin, ke jin mein tum ho kya tumhein bata sakoon', I felt that.

[armuse]

A rare picture of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and his Israeli lover Rita, about whom he wrote:

"I love you despite the nose of my tribe, my city and the chains of customs. But I'm afraid if I sell everyone, you will sell me and I'll return with disappointments."

When it was discovered that she was working for the Israeli Mossad intelligence, he said:

"I felt like my homeland was occupied again."

and

“Out of my ignorance, I called you a homeland and I forgot that homelands are taken away.” -Mahmoud Darwish

original owner : @muhtesemz ❣

[armuse]

“And when they speak of Troy, they speak of Helen who fled with Paris for love, and this inspires verse. Not Briseis, who lost all, all she ever loved and was used as barter in a war that wasn’t hers. Not Cassandra, who tried to warn them but was called liar because of a Gods curse. Not Hecuba, who was forced to give all her children to this cruel beast she knew would never be satisfied. Not Andromache, who lost her beloved husband Hector to a battle he should not have had to fight, and her baby to the ruthlessness of the victors and their spite. I suppose as a woman your value in war is simply casualty if your face isn’t synonymous with devastating beauty, that powerful men wish to possess and claim so much, that they will launch a thousand ships in their own misplaced honour, yet blame it on your name.”

— Nikita Gill, Woman of Troy

[armuse]

This post needs way more recognition y'all ✨

Listen, this is a very specific topic to be iffy about, but for your knowledge, the Roman gods are not the Greek gods.

The Romans were big on syncretism (the combination of different forms of belief or intellectual thought) and the adoption of foreign gods. The Greek deities were known since very early periods via the Etruscan culture, which was heavily influenced by Greece since the middle of the 8th century BC because of trade routes as well as the Greek cultural potential and would come to be completely engulfed around the third century BC with the Roman-Etruscan wars, but just like you’d see the Romans claiming the Germanic tribes worshipped their own gods under different names (the Germania by Roman historian Tacitus, written around 98 AD), the same happened here, and the fusion wasn’t 100% accurate.

While in the case of Zeus and Jupiter, for example, it worked well, Venus is far more motherly and political than Aphrodite (as Mars is the Father of Rome via the myth of Romulus and Remus, Venus is Venus Genetrix, Venus the Mother, and the only time you’ll see Aphrodite being motherly is in… the Aeneid, a distinctively Roman piece), Mars is an agricultural god as well as the god of war and has way more political connotations than Ares (he was a member of the archaic Capitoline Triad), Mercury is far more linked with commerce than the more pastoral Hermes, and the list goes on. Apollo was imported directly and very early (a temple for him, the Temple of Apollo Sosianus, was erected in the city of Rome as early as 431 BC), thus keeping the name but undergoing a very distinct Romanization of his attributes and worship. Janus, Quirinus and Terminus were very important Roman gods which had no Greek equivalent.

Isis, for example, was worshipped as herself, equated with a number of deities in both the Greek and the Roman worlds and some of her methods of worship and symbolism were associated with the Virgin Mary. It’s a far more complicated scenario, babes, especially when you consider Alexander’s conquests and the expansion of Hellenistic culture as well as its contact with many other cultures.

Syncretism is way more complicated than “the Romans just stole the Greek gods and gave them different names, the uncreative fucks”. The traditional date for Rome’s foundation is 753 BC and the Western Roman Empire would last until 436 AD. That’s over a thousand years of conquest, trade and growing and shrinking territories, and none of these factors are likely to leave a religion unaltered.

Besides, the practice of religious syncretism is way older and more common than you’d expect. The Akkadians did it to Summerian deities a few thousand years before this especially after the conquest of Sargon of Akkad in 2340 BC (“Mesopotamia: the Sumerians”. Washington State University). The Greeks were doing much the same with the Roman pantheon itself (Dionysus of Halicarnassus and Plutarch use Greek names for Roman cult), with the Egyptian pantheon and with the Scythian pantheon (Herodotus in both cases, though the associations would outlive him, such as the case of Zeus/Amon).

So, no the Roman gods aren’t the plagiarized versions of the Greek gods, and I could defend this in front of a jury.

[armuse]

“Unlike the stomach, the brain does not alert you when empty”

— African Proverb

[armuse]

“They say energy can neither be destroyed nor created, that atoms simply transform from here to there.

Which is to say, probably I've always known you, probably my atoms have always known your name.

For I know not God, nor miracles, but I swear,

'Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same' ”

—this ancient love (about bonds of the soul)

by ar.muse

I wrote this for an English assignment but holy shit, it's good. Inspired by Emily Bronte ofc. If you like it, repost it please! <3

[armuse]

My blades may not redeem your bloodshed but they will atleast remember your name: they shall honour you when your own friends did not.

— excerpt from a book I will spend years daydreaming about but will never write.

[armuse]

“this one time i laughed so hard, his smile softened on the other side of the phone, as he whispered on call, "you've laughed so happily after so long, do it often, it makes me happy". and poetry seemed true back then, for time really did stop, for the distance between us didn't seem to exist anymore.”

-I was on a call with him and I realised (2)

(a.r.muse)

[armuse]

Sophocles' Electra (tr. Peter Meineck & Paul Woodruff)

[armuse]

ما لون عينيها؟

لا أدري ففي كل مرة أتأمل عينيها أفقد الذاكرة

What are the colour of her eyes?

I don't know. For every time I contemplate her eyes I lose my memory.

Mahmoud Darwish

[armuse]

I think it's beautiful how we meet people only when the universe thinks it's a perfect timing to collide two hearts in a symphony. And how all of a sudden love is not just an emotion, but rather life itself.

I think it's beautiful that we find something, some place, someone, and our soul goes like... “There you are. There you've always been, and I was foolish enough to search you somewhere else. "

—I was on a call with him and I realised. (ar.muse)

[armuse]

[armuse]

[armuse]

i DID NOT realise this. Acotar >>>

[armuse]

Somedays you want to be as creative as Lemony Snicket, somedays you just want to be someone's Beatrice.

[armuse]

Hades and Persephone are the idols of romance.

— since our story is a crime itself | g.f.