[Poem] Little Gidding - T. S. Eliot

"Four Quartets" is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published individually over a six-year period. "The Little Gidding" is the last of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets. The poems were not collected until Eliot's New York publisher printed them together in 1943. They were first published as a series in Great Britain in 1944 towards the end of Eliot's poetic career. Four Quartets are four interlinked meditations with the common theme being man's relationship with time, the universe, and the divine. (from Wikipedia.org)

"There are three conditions which often look alike

Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow: 

Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment 

From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference 

Which resembles the others as death resembles life, 

Being between two lives"

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"What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from."

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"We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring 

Will be to arrive where we started 

And know the place for the first time."

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"Through the unknown, unremembered gate 

When the last of earth left to discover 

Is that which was the beginning; 

At the source of the longest river 

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for 

But heard, half-heard, in the stillness

Between two waves of the sea.

Quick now, here, now, always-- 

A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing not less than everything)

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

When the tongues of flames are in-folded 

Into the crowned knot of fire 

And the fire and the rose are one."

[Film] The Merchant of Venice - Michael Radford

From The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare... The screen writer and the director of the movie is Michael Radford. He also wrote the screenplay of "1984" -the famous novel by George Orwell- and directed it. I highly recommend you to read the play first. 

Shylock: If it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me and hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies, and what's his reason? I am a Jew! Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands? Organs, dimensions? Senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food? Hurt with the same weapons? Subject to the same diseases? Healed by the same means? Warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute. And it shall go hard but I will better the instruction. 

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Portia: You see me, lord Bassanio, where I stand, such as I am. [...] Happiest of all, is that her gentle spirit commits itself to yours to be directed as by her governor, her lord, her king. This house, these servants, and this same myself are yours, my lord's. I give them with this ring, which when you part from, lose or give away, let it presage the ruin of your love. And give me vantage to exclaim on you. 

**

Bassanio: The world is still deceived with ornament. In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt but being seasoned with a gracious voice obscures the show of evil? In religion, what damned error but some sober brow will bless it and approve it with a text, hiding the grossness with fair... ornament? Look on beauty and you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight. Therefore, thou gaudy gold, I will none of you. Nor none of you, O pale and common drudge between man and man. But you, O meagre lead, which rather threatenest than dost promise aught, your paleness moves me more... than eloquence. Here choose I. Joy be the consequence. 

[Film] Barry Lyndon - Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick adapted William Makepeace Thackeray's novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon into a movie in 1975. "An Irish rogue wins the heart of a rich widow and assumes her dead husband's position in 18th Century aristocracy," says IMDb. I only include narrator's words in this post since I find them the most powerful and the most genius.

No lad who has liberty for the first time, and twenty guineas in his pocket, is very sad, and Barry rode towards Dublin thinking not so much of the kind mother left alone, and of the home behind him, but of tomorrow, and all the wonders it would bring. 

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A lady who sets her heart upon a lad in uniform must prepare to change lovers pretty quickly, or her life will be but a sad one. This heart of Lischen's was like many a neighboring town and had been stormed and occupied several times before Barry came to invest it. 

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It would require a great philosopher and historian to explain the causes of the famous Seven Years' War in which Europe was engaged and in which Barry's regiment was now on its way to take part. Let it suffice to say that England and Prussia were allies and at war against the French, the Swedes, the Russians and the Austrians. 

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Fate had determined that he should leave none of his race behind him, and that he should finish his life poor, lonely and childless. 

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Utterly baffled and beaten, what was a lonely and broken-hearted man to do? Barry took the annuity and returned to Ireland with his mother to complete his recovery. Sometime later, he travelled to the Continent. His life there, we have not the means of following accurately. But he appears to have resumed his former profession of a gambler without his former success. He never saw [...] again. 

**

Epilogue:

It was in the reign of George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor they are all equal now.