"Across the page the symbols moved in grave morrice,
in the mummery of their letters, wearing quaint caps of
squares and cubes. Give hands, traverse, bow to partner:
so: imps of fancy of the Moors. Gone too from the world,
Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and
movement, flashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure
soul of the world, a darkness shining in brightness which
brightness could not comprehend." — James Joyce
Monday, February 2, 2026
Happy Birthday, James Joyce —
Córdoba in Dublin
Crimson Date
The date November 30, 2014, in a Harvard Crimson story yesterday
suggests some posts from that date now tagged Strand Flake.
Also so tagged . . .
Sunday, March 12, 2017
Raise High the Ridgepole, Architects*
A post suggested by remarks of J. D. Salinger in
The New Yorker of November 19, 1955 —
|
Wikipedia: Taiji (philosophy) Etymology The word 太極 comes from I Ching : "易有太極，是生兩儀，兩儀生四象，四象生八卦，八卦定吉凶，吉凶生大業。" Taiji (太極) is a compound of tai 太 "great; grand; supreme; extreme; very; too" (a superlative variant of da 大 "big; large; great; very") and ji 極 "pole; roof ridge; highest/utmost point; extreme; earth's pole; reach the end; attain; exhaust". In analogy with the figurative meanings of English pole, Chinese ji 極 "ridgepole" can mean "geographical pole; direction" (e.g., siji 四極 "four corners of the earth; world's end"), "magnetic pole" (Beiji 北極 "North Pole" or yinji 陰極 "negative pole; cathode"), or "celestial pole" (baji 八極 "farthest points of the universe; remotest place"). Combining the two words, 太極 means "the source, the beginning of the world". Common English translations of the cosmological Taiji are the "Supreme Ultimate" (Le Blanc 1985, Zhang and Ryden 2002) or "Great Ultimate" (Chen 1989, Robinet 2008); but other versions are the "Supreme Pole" (Needham and Ronan 1978), "Great Absolute", or "Supreme Polarity" (Adler 1999). |
See also Polarity in this journal.
* A phrase adapted, via Salinger,
from a poem by Sappho—
Ἴψοι δὴ τὸ μέλαθρον,
Υ᾽μήναον
ἀέρρετε τέκτονεσ ἄνδρεσ,
Υ᾽μήναον
γάμβροσ ἔρχεται ἶσοσ Ά᾽ρευϊ,
[Υ᾽μήναον]
ανδροσ μεγάλο πόλυ μείζων
[Υ᾽μήναον]
Comments Off on Raise High the Ridgepole, Architects*