Download Ciel et Espace 484 septembre 2010 by Association francaise d'astronomie PDF

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Crains d’aborder la plaine où le sabbat s’assemble, Où les démons hurlants viennent danser ensemble; Ces murs maudits par Dieu, par Satan profanés, Ce magique château dont l’enfer sait l’histoire, Et qui, désert le jour, quand tombe la nuit noire, Enflamme ses vitraux dans l’ombre illuminés! Voyageur isolé, qui t’éloignes si vite, De ton chien inquiet la nuit accompagné, Après le jour brûlant, quand le repos t’invite, Où mènes-tu si tard ton cheval résigné?    from Les Orientales Sara la baigneuse Sara, belle d’indolence, Se balance Dans un hamac, au-dessus Du bassin d’une fontaine Toute pleine D’eau puisée à l’Illysus; Et la frêle escarpolette Se reflète Dans le transparent miroir, Avec la baigneuse blanche Qui se penche, Qui se penche pour se voir.

Now, what is this chorus, this bizarre character placed between spectacle and spectator? Isn’t it simply the poet completing his epic? The ancients’ theatres, like their dramas, were grandiose, pontifical, epic. They could hold thirty thousand spectators; performances took place in the open air, in broad daylight, and lasted all  Before the Exile I: – day. The actors lifted up their voices, masked their features, heightened their size; they made themselves into giants, like their roles.

Contact with the grotesque has made the sublime purer, greater, indeed more sublime than it was in ancient times. Inevitably so. When art is internally consistent, it produces all its effects much more tellingly. If Homer’s  Before the Exile I: – Elysium lacks most of the ethereal harmony and angelic beauty of Milton’s Eden, it’s because the latter has a far more terrible hell beneath it than the pagan Tartarus. Do you think Beatrice and Francesca da Rimini would seem as enchanting in the hands of a poet who didn’t lock us in the Tower of Famine and force us to share Ugolino’s revolting meal?