Moderator: sonic
Spica wrote:Its from the final (all black and white) chapter of the first manga.marto_motoko wrote:Or maybe motoko was kidding.
...another question. What manga was that from exactly? I've read and reread the mangas MMI, and the original, and I don't recall anything of the sort.
Thank you! I will look at it right now!
I'll quote Robert Alter's essay on the Psalms from The Literary Guide to the Bible (Harvard University Press, 1987):what is the deal with the Psalms? I didn't understand that. Maybe is missed something in the book?
That reference is about Self and Other, the human and the divine, the finite and the infinite, the creation and the creator, the lover and the beloved...One of the most common themes in the collection [of Psalms] is death and rebirth... Most of the poems draw on a common repetoire of images: the gates of Sheol (the underworld), the darkness of the pit populated by mere shades, or, in an alternative marine setting, as in Jonah's thanksgiving psalm, the overwhelming breakers of the sea. Illness and other kinds of dangers, perhaps even spiritual distress, are represented as a descent into the underworld from which the Lord is entreated to bring the person back or, in the thanksgiving psalms, is praised for having brought him back...
It goes without saying that whatever themes the various psalms treat are caught in the heavily charged relationship between man and God. Thus, longing, dependence, desparation, exultation become elements in a series of remarkable love poems- once more, cutting across psalmodic genre- addressed by man to God. Religious experience attains a new contemplative and emotive inwardness in these poems. The radically new monotheistic idea that God is everywhere is rendered as the most immediately apprehended existential fact:
If I soar to heaven, you are there,
if I make my bed in Sheol, again you're there.
If I take wing with the dawn,
dwell at the end of the West,
there, too, your hand guides me,
your right hand holds me fast. (139:8-10)
O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.
Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.
Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.
For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.
Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.
Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.
Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.
For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.
I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.
My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.
How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!
If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.
Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God: depart from me therefore, ye bloody men.
For they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies take thy name in vain.
Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?
I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.
Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
