The carnival in the forest.


"...Here without sound, stealthily sliding,
Icily sliding through fathoms of night
Rises an ooze-born, five-mile-bottom light.
Surface apparition of an unarrestable depth-bloom--
Glides through the saltblack in on the sybilline spray,
Flickers by moor and hollow and till day
Purple-burning flares in a moss filled tomb..."

--Archibald Fleming, The Island Called Pharos (1935)


"An Alsatian with a German mother and French father, he [Hans Arp] became convinced that 'the war between France and Germany was no good for me.' Alsace being then part of the Reich, he promptly took refuge in France; but on learning that he would be expected to serve in the French Army, he made his way to neutral Switzerland. Even there the long arm of Germany reached for him; the German consul at Zürich called him in and told him he must undergo a physical examination prior to being deported and drafted. He was then given a form to fill in, listing about thirty questions starting with his birth. He wrote down the day, month and year--1889--on the first line, repeated this for all the rest of the questions, then drew a line at the bottom of the page, and added it up to the grand total of something like 56,610! Then he stripped off all his clothes and, with a supremely idiotic expression, handed the paper to the examining official. This person, in some alarm, said quickly: 'That's all right, now, Herr Arp, you may put on your clothes. We will get in touch with you in due course.' But the Germans never bothered him again."

--Matthew Josephson, Life Among the Surrealists (1962)


    "Poems

Poems are born when life is dead,
Or else so much alive
No ribs can give it residence,
No heart can give it hive.

There is no soul of transient thew,
No mind of common grey
That can subsist on such an air--
But poems come that way."

--Lindley Williams Hubbell, Dark Pavilion (1927)


"An ironist without humour is almost inconceivable and if he could exist he would be not human but diabolic--intolerable also, I should think to his fellow devils."

--Saintsbury