#robert lowell

[metamorphesque]

"to endure!"

vincent van gogh ("trees and undergrowth") robert lowell [How will the heart endure?] vincent van gogh [I must endure bad times and the waters will rise, possibly as high as the lips and possibly even higher, how can I know beforehand? But I’ll fight my fight and sell my life dearly and try to win and pull through.] rainer maria rilke [To be loved means to be consumed. To love means to radiate with inexhaustible light. To be loved is to pass away, to love is to endure.] joan didion [Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it.] elena ferrante [maybe not even a very orderly mind can endure the discovery of not being loved.] elena ferrante [I will give what I can give, I will take what I can take, I will endure what has to be endured.] han kang [The feeling that she had never really lived in this world caught her by surprise. It was a fact. She had never lived. Even as a child, as far back as she could remember, she had done nothing but endure.] victor frankl [What is to give light must endure burning.]

[mournfulroses]

Robert Lowell, from a letter featured in Robert Lowell In Love originally pub. in 2015

[strykerlancer]

— Robert Lowell, from “The Collected Poems of Robert Lowell.”

[amourduloup]

robert lowell | franz wright

[derangedrhythms]

How will the heart endure?

Robert Lowell, Lord Weary’s Castle; from ‘Mr. Edwards and the Spider’

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Diane Ackerman. Robert Lowell. George Abbe. Anne Sexton. Lola Ridge. George Meredith. Sylvia Plath. Frederick Seidel. Charlotte Mew. Countee Cullen. Betty Adcock. Anne Sexton.

[rollingthunderpouringrain]

Roman Roy character study feat. ... love (I)

1: ‘When in Rome’, Megan Alms // 3: ‘You search for Rome in Rome?’, Robert Lowell // 2, 4, 5: ‘A Primer for the Small Weird Loves’, Richard Siken // 'Succession' on HBO //

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

J.R. Lowell ( pseud. of Jan Lowell & Robert Lowell ) - Daughter Of Darkness - Dell - 1973

[haveyoureadthispoem-poll]

"When you are powerless / To sand-bag this Atlantic bulwark, faced / By the earth-shaker, green, unwearied, chaste / In his steel scales: ask for no Orphean lute / To pluck life back. The guns of the steeled fleet / Recoil and then repeat / The hoarse salute."

Read it here | Reblog for a larger sample size!

[uwmspeccoll]

Justice, the Court System, and Drama in Athens

After ousting of the last tyrant of Athens, Hippias, in 510 BCE, and establishing Athenian Democracy, several new departments of governance needed to be created. One of the most crucial was that which presided over justice. Up to this point in Greek history, justice was the responsibility of the wronged party’s family. This commonly meant that if someone were killed, the victim's family would need to track down the murderer and kill them in return. This often resulted in a cycle of revenge with rival families, continuously thinning each other down to the point of non-existence. Given that such feuds tend to weaken a state rather than strengthen it, the Athenian government sought to take justice into the state's hands, thus leading to the establishment of the Athenian court.

This style of delivering justice had never been seen in the Greek world up to this point. The mythical origin of this system is reflected in Athenian playwright Aeschylus’s Oresteia, the only known surviving trilogy of dramas from the ancient Greek world. One of Special Collections’ several editions of these plays (our oldest is a Parisian printing in Greek published in 1552) is this one translated by the noted American poet Robert Lowell and published by Farrar, Straus, Giroux in 1978.

The story of the Oresteia is broken down into three plays, Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides. Agamemnon tells of the murder of Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, by his wife Clytemnestra after his return from the ten-year Trojan War. The Libation Bearers relates how Agamemnon’s son Orestes returns years after his father’s murder to seek revenge against Clytemnestra on Apollo’s orders, but after killing her becomes the target of the Furies' merciless wrath. The Eumenides illustrates how the sequence of events in the trilogy ends up in the development of social order or a proper judicial system in Athenian society with Athena setting up a trial in Athens for Orestes, the first courtroom trial. Orestes is acquitted, which the Furies reluctantly accept, leading Athena to rename them the Eumenides, “The Gracious Ones.”  Athena then proclaims that all trials must henceforth be settled in court rather than being carried out personally. 

From this series of plays, Aeschylus was able to demonstrate his belief in how integral the Athenian justice system was to maintaining the strength and stability of Athens, rather than being subject to the whims of familial vengeance cycles.

View more of my Classics posts.

– LauraJean, Special Collections Undergraduate Classics Intern

[power-chords]

[lillyli-74]

My heart bleeds black blood for the monster.

~Robert Lowell

[1five1two]

The dead season when wolves live off the wind.

Robert Lowell

[cadmusfly]

Leaving Home, Marshal Ney

Loved person, I'm never in the clear with conscience, I hang by a kitetail. Old lovers used to stop for the village's unreliable clock and bells, their progress. . . more government, civil service, the Prussian school, the Irish constable, hardware exploding help on the city poor. The Ancien Régime locked in place at the tap of a glove, those long steel scoopnets he rolled in the bureau. . . . I hear the young voice of a fresher age and habit, walking to fame or Paris, "You little knew I could hardly put one foot before the other I passed through many varieties of untried being, a Marshal of France, and shot for too much courage— why should shark be eaten when bait swim free?"

—History by Robert Lowell (1917 - 1977)

[hyperions-fate]

O there's a terrifying innocence in my face

drenched with the silver salvage of the mornfrost.

Robert Lowell, 'History' (History, 1973)

[derangedrhythms]

Robert Lowell, Life Studies; from ‘Skunk Hour’ (edited excerpt)