This powerful reading was recorded in October of 1962, only days after the poem was written, for the British Council in London. This version is slightly longer than the one published posthumously in the collection ‘Ariel’ (1965).


Lady Lazarus

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it—

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?—

Yes, yes Herr Professor
It is I.
Can you deny

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot—
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone, I may be Japanese,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.
There is a charge.

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart—
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there—

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

(Source: elemes)

Virginia Woolf. Orlando: corrected page proof, 9 June-22 July 1928.
theparisreview: proustitute: T. S. Eliot, Manuscript of “Virginia,” 1959 In honor of Eliot’s birthday yesterday.
“Have I mentioned already that I am learning to see? Yes, I am making a start. I have not made much progress yet, but I mean to make the most of my time. To think, for example, that I have never consciously registered just how many faces there are. There are a great many people, but there are a great many more faces, for every person has several. There are people who wear the same face for years on end; naturally it shows signs of wear, it gets dirty, it cracks at the creases, it splays out like gloves worn on a journey. These are simple people, practicing economies, and they do not change their face or even have it cleaned. It’ll do fine, they insist, and who is to prove them wrong? The question, of course, since they have several faces, is what they do with the others. They keep them for best: their children can wear them some day. But it has been known for their dogs to go out wearing them, too. And why not? A face is a face. Other people are disconcertingly quick to change their faces, one after another, and they wear them out. At first they suppose they have enough to last for ever, but hardly have they reached forty when they come to the last of them. There is of course a tragic side to this. They are not used to looking after their faces; the last is worn out in a week, holed and paper-thin in numerous places, and little by little the underlay shows through, the non-face, and they go about wearing that. But that woman, that woman: she was wholly immersed within herself, bowed forward, head in hands. It was at the corner of the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. The moment I saw her, I began to tread softly. The poor should not be disturbed when they are lost in thought. The thing they are trying to think of may yet come to them. The street was too deserted, its emptiness was wearied with itself and pulled out the footfall from under my feet and banged it about as if it were knocking a wooden clog. The woman was startled and started out of herself too rapidly and roughly, so that her face was left in her hands. I could see it lying in them, the hollow mould of it. It cost me an indescribable effort to keep my gaze on those hands and not look at what had been torn from out of them. I was appalled to see the inside of the facial mask, but I was more terrified still of seeing a head bare and stripped of its face.” The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910) - Rainer Maria Rilke (Picture courtesy of Knud Odde.)
Last corrected page proof of “To The Lighthouse” by Virginia Woolf.
fuckyeahvirginiawoolf: The Waves, Page 113.
“Dien avond vroor het weer hard. De sterren waren helder en ontzettend hoog. De kachel was niet aan. Wij zaten met ons drieën, jassen aan, kragen in de hoogte, hoeden op zoo als wij zoo vaak hadden gezeten als wij harder waren dan het kapitalistische gemoed en niets meer hadden om te verstoken. Toen begon Japi allerakeligst te boomen. Je zeilde maar met de aarde door de ijzige donkere ruimte, de nacht zou niet meer ophouden, de zon was weg en ging niet meer op. De aarde joeg voort in de duisternis, de ijzige wind huilde er achter aan. Al die werelden zeilden verlaten door de ruimte. Als er een tegen je aan zeilde was je verloren, verloren met al die 1500 millioen ongelukkige menschen. Japi zat te trillen in zijn jas, het vroor in de kamer. Toen begon i weer anders. De zon kon zoo mooi in de Waal schijnen. Bij Zaltbommel had i de zon in de Waal zien schijnen toen i de laatste maal met den trein over de brug kwam. Tusschen de brug en de stad maakte de zon een groote lichtplek in het water. Het water stroomde maar, de zon scheen er maar in, honderd, duizend, honderdduizend maal. Voor twee duizend jaar scheen de zon er al in en stroomde het water maar. God weet hoe lang al. Meer dan 700.000 maal was de zon sedert al opgegaan, meer dan 700.000 maal was i ondergegaan, al dien tijd had het water gestroomd. Hij werd beroerd van dat getal. Hoeveel regendagen zouden daarbij geweest zijn? Hoeveel nachten zou het zoo hard gevroren hebben als nu, en harder? Hoeveel menschen zouden dat water hebben zien stromen en de zon er in zien schijnen en al die sterren gezien hebben in de nachten dat ‘t zoo vroor? Hoeveel menschen die nu dood zijn? En hoeveel menschen zouden dat water nog zien stroomen? En 2000 jaar was nog niets; duizenden jaren langer had de aarde al bestaan, duizenden jaren kon i nog bestaan. Duizenden jaren kon het water nog stroomen, zonder dat hij het zien zou. En als de aarde verging dan was er eigenlijk nog niks gebeurd. Daarna kwam nog zoveel tijd, er kwam geen einde aan den tijd. En al dien tijd zou hij dood zijn.” De Uitvreter (1911) - Nescio
duino-elegies: Postcard from Rainer Maria Rilke to Franziska zu Reventlow (source)
duino-elegies: Church in Raron (Switzerland) next to Rainer Maria Rilke’s grave (by Mind & Brain on Flickr)
elemes: This is where I feel most at home. Forever and ever.