Showing posts with label jun'ichirō tanizaki. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jun'ichirō tanizaki. Show all posts

Saturday, March 30, 2013

push back into the shadows the things that come forward too clearly (visitors and suicides)

jim haynes - the wires cracked - 2013

have found nothing to eat and are returning with tired wings to their nests; at the craggy cliffs along the sea-shore; at the fires burning on the masts of invisible ships; at the muffled sound of the waves beating against the huge fish who, as they swim, reveal their black backs and then plunge down again into the fathomless depths; and against man, who makes slaves of them. after which, they start running again through the countryside, bounding across ditches, paths, fields, through weeds and over steep rocks, their paws bleeding. their prolonged howls fill nature with dread.
(lautréamont - maldoror, 39)

tomonari nozaki ‎- north palace - 2013

about these places especially, dark, almost dirty, shadows gathered. come to discover beauty in shadows. the light from the garden; fragile, dying rays, avoid the failure to comprehend the mystery of shadows, and especially not to disturb the glow. listening to the murmur that penetrates, what lies within the darkness one cannot distinguish. the spell disappears from the dream world built by that strange light, what feeble light there was i could imagine. a part picked up by a faint light. water lines harmonize with and bury the wires.  the beauty of the grain begins to emerge, left obscure, shrouded in a dusky haze. softness and warmth of the still dimmer light, the aura of depth and mystery.  set out in the night, and recede into darkness. dreamlike glow that suffuses it.
(tanizaki - manipulated in praise of shadows)

atay ilgun & alper yildirim - aokigahara, the black sea of trees - 2012
wounded wolf press

the waves tower, and the suicide phenomenon, a labyrinth forest and postwar nihilism that expanded the scope and further darkened the atmosphere of the wind-blocking density of the trees and an absence of deer, rabbits and the like, this forest is known for being exceptionally quiet!

autechre - exai - 2013
warp / autechre

darkness hummed about him, clinging to him like coagulated, damp warm wool. the terror he had felt as intimation fused with the darkness became whole and real. he could see a little now: the darkness had grown horizontal lines of gray, as if it had begun to decompose. "i just feel tired' he said.
(p.k. dick - ubik)

jacob kirkegaard ‎- conversion - 2013
touch / kirkegaard

wrapped in his cloak, a book in his lap, our traveller rested; hours slipped by unawares. it stopped raining, the canvas was taken down.  the horizon was visible right round; beneath the sombre dome of the sky stretched the vast plain of empty sea. but immeasurable unarticulated space weakens our power to measure time as well: the time-sense falters and grows dim. strange, shadowy figures passed and repassed. (t. mann - death in venice)

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

the only sun / light in japanese architecture / lethe catastrophe point












black leader looking like an early sun photo
& window/light found in yasujirô ozu's the only son - 1936

...and i realized then that only in dim half-light is the true beauty of japanese lacquerware revealed... but in the still dimmer light of the candlestand, as i gazed at the trays and bowls standing in the shadows cast by that flickering point of flame, i discovered in the gloss of this lacquerware a depth and richness like that of a still, dark pond, a beauty i had not before seen.... to discover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows towards beauty's ends... and so it has come to be that the beauty of a japanese room depends on a variation of shadows, heavy shadows against light shadows - it has nothing else...
from jun'ichirō tanizaki's in praise of shadows

lethe:
[l. lēthē, a use of gr. ληθη forgetfulness, f. ληθ,
ablaut-var. of λαθ, root of λανθαυεσθας to forget.
in gr. ληθη is not the name of the river, though it occurs
as a personification; the river is ληθης 'water of lethe'].
1. gr. myth. a river in hades, the water of which produced,
in those who drank it, forgetfullnes of the past. hence,
the 'waters of oblivion', or forgetfullness of the past.
¶2. [?influenced by l. lēt(h)um.] death. rare.
3. atrib. and comb., as lethe-flood, lake, wharf; lethe-wards adv.
(oed definition)

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