"The fallacy in historical accounts of the Symbolist movement has been to measure its current in terms of 'generations.' From this point of view, symbolism would seem to be a ball tossed from one epoch to the next, until it disappears, uncaught, into a pit."
--Anna Balakian


"I just can't believe that laughing then and laughing now are exactly the same."


"O hummingbird fish, O picture of gold! In the net alone are you pleasured. There you destroy your sadness." --Song 60, Cantares Mexicos: Songs of the Aztecs (tr Bierhorst, 1985)


   "Puranânûru, 182

This world exists only because
some men in it,
even when they might have the drink
that made the gods deathless,
will not drink it alone.
They do not hate or fail to act
even when they fear what others fear.
They will give their lives for fame
but they would not take even the entire earth
if it soiled their name.
They are never without joy,
and though they may be great,
they do not use their powers for themselves
but only for others.
Because of them this world is."

--Poets of the Tamil Anthologies (ed Hart, 1979)



"Western sinologists have very much inclined to ignore the part played by pi [metaphor] and hsing [allegory] in Chinese verse, largely because the tradition of a work possessing several levels of meaning died out in Europe during the seventeenth century and has only recently been revived." --J D Frodsham, introduction to: The Poems of Li Ho (1970)


"He is haunted by the mystery of whiteness, as another great poet, Lorca, was haunted by the spell of green."
--ibid


"Can't you see yourself transformed to snake or turtle
For twenty centuries,
Dragging your life out, year after year,
On the grass-green dikes of Wu?"

--Li Ho


"It is true that after his death Thomson's Corolianus was spliced with Shakespeare's to become the version favored on the British stage for many years..." --Percy Adams, introduction to: The Plays of James Thomson (1979)