“Wuthering Heights is surely the most beautiful and most profoundly violent love story. For though Emily Brontë, despite her beauty, appears to have had no experience of love, she had an anguished knowledge of passion. She had the sort of knowledge which links love not only with clarity, but also with violence and death – because death seems to be the truth of love, just as love is the truth of death.”
— Georges Bataille, Literature and Evil (via bluebeardsbride)
“Heathcliff trespasses everywhere: he is the double of the dead Earnshaw son for whom he is named, the double of Nelly who is both inside and outside the family, the double of Edgar in his love for Catherine, the double of Hindley as a tyrannical master, the double of Hareton as an excluded savage, the double of Isabella in her volatile rebelliousness, the double of his son, his second, and the double of the father who brings home an unaccountable booty from elsewhere.
And, he is also the double of his most obvious opposite, Lockwood, in a way that finally punctuates the indifference of antagonists, the irrelevance of counting, the generality of antagonism. For just as the condition of possibility of the narrative is the intrusion of the foreigner Lockwood, the condition of possibility of the story is the incorporation of the exotic Heathcliff.”
“I have dreamt in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind. And this is one: I’m going to tell it - but take care not to smile at any part of it.”
i. ii. iv. The Romance of Tristan and Iseult, Joseph Bédier (tr. H. Belloc) // iii. vii. Heathcliff on Cathy’s Grave and The Lovers Together, Fritz Eichenberg // v. Tristán e Isolda (La Muerte), Rogelio de Egusquiza // vi. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë // viii. An Oresteia (tr. Anne Carson)
I have new prints up on my Etsy shop! Inspired, yet again, by the Bronte Sisters! Three photo intaglio printed portraits of the famous trio, perfect for any Bronte lover!
