“...i resti della mia marea - zoccoli, assi, tappi, frantumi, pietruzze - le mie poesie”. Marina Cvetaeva | Classics, Roman History, Ancient Greek-Latin-Hebrew
The strong use of repetition, scaling, recursion, and self-similarity in Roman mosaics can be described as “proto‑fractal” or fractalesque. Even if not infinite like true fractals and not intentional mathematical fractals, these patterns are algorithmic in spirit.
“Mi torna alla mente il passato con parvenza di intero, per un bisogno di appartenenza a qualcosa, che stasera mi spinge verso di esso, verso una provenienza”. Erri De Luca
@MerriamWebster “Specchietto per le allodole” literally means “little mirror for larks.”
In traditional bird hunting, hunters used small reflective objects (like mirrors or shiny pieces of metal) to attract larks.
Metaphorical it refers to a deceptive lure, something attractive but misleading.
@MerriamWebster In Italian, we have a similar expression. I mean, the image is different but its meaning is pretty the same: specchietto per le allodole.
“Dearest Felice, please write and tell me about yourself, as in the old days, about the office, about your friends, your family, your walks, about books; you have no idea how important it is to my life.”
Franza Kafka
#2June
“That sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis—it’s actually cerulean.”
Roman fresco, titled "Wounded Aeneas" (or Enea ferito), discovered in the House of Siricus, Pompeii (1st-century AD)
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back
my too-sudden image. Who knows? perhaps the same
bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening…
Rainer Maria Rilke
You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don’t even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of the next
moment.
You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house—, and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me. Streets that I chanced upon,—
you had just walked down them and vanished.