El Desdichado

2005-04-09 at 11:44 p.m.

I've been reading Victims of Memory by Mark Prendergast, which is about 'recovered memories' and has a weird load of information about mental health in the 1800s and other things as well. I've read it before, and it is quite a good book. I like books on controversial subjects, which is why I liked Christina Hoff Sommers' Who Stole Feminism as well. I'm desperately trying to finish it at the moment, because I have other good books to read but this one is due back at the library on Tuesday.

Aside from that I've been doing very little. Been playing a lot on the playstation and downloading music. I even managed to find an mp3 of Nobody Loves a Fairy When She's Forty on Limewire. Incidentally, that is a better program than Kazaa which I had been using, it seems to be faster, has more variety on it, and, I am assured, places less spyware on your computer. Only trouble is that I am running out of ideas for things to download!

Anyway, just a short entry for today I think, as I have to finish my biology assignment, which is going quite well.

El Desdichado
Guy de Nerval


I am the dark one, -the widower; -the unconsoled,
The prince of Aquitaine at his stricken tower:
My sole star is dead, -and my constellated lute
Bears the black sun of the melancolia.

In the night of the tomb, you who consoled me,
Give me back Mount Posilipo and the Italian sea,
The flower which pleased so my desolate heart,
And the trellis where the grape vine unites with the rose.

Am I Amor or Phoebus? . . . Lusignan or Biron?
My forehead is still red from the kiss of the queen;
I have dreamd in the grotto where the mermaid swims...

And two times victorious I have crosst the Acheron:
Modulating turn by turn on the lyre of Orpheus
The sighs of the saint and the cries of the Fay.


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