Weöres Sándor

"Give back the unit of measure to man". Introduce in prayers.

The model of total-time in phenomenon-time: the idea-time. A person's life in idea-time does not begin with birth and does not end with death. Your vague, irresponsible acts in idea-time are always 'youthful', and your mature, responsible moments are 'old age', whether they occur at the age of twenty or seventy.
In ideal-time, the life of the one-man is always moving from the weaker to the different, and the life of humanity from the different to the weaker. For only the one-man always rises above the state of life; mankind as a whole is a formless mass that darkens.
The four main epochs of humanity in the time of ideas:
First, the Golden Age. The first Age of Man. The life of man is silent-virtuous, simple, mystery-less, in perfect harmony with disembodied forces and nature.
Second is the Silver Age. The unchanging base-layer and the changing personality are separated in man. Eternity radiates into the ephemeral in three ways: as being, as unqualified validity, as truth; as goodness drawing the temporal towards the timeless; and as the formal factor of the former two, as beauty. Human life is characterised by the proliferation of faculties, by the achievement of greatness without great difficulty. Heavenly help multiplies man's strength, and man does not always use his strength in the service of the one from whom he has received it. The rebellious man of the Silver Age is so powerful that disembodied forces can defeat him only in severe, alternate struggles.
Third is Ore Age. In human beings, the link between the unchanging and the changing is loosened, in need of constant reinforcement. Truth, goodness, beauty are no longer self-evident, but must be sought. The search for truth is science, goodness is law, beauty is art. The man of the Age of Ore is tenacious, hard-working, courageous, passionate, unyielding, vindictive; his stubborn diligence usually brings results. If he rebels, he has little strength to be a menace, but he is so tenacious that disembodied forces can only drain him with a torrent of fire and water.
Fourth is the Iron Age. In man there is no longer any connection between the unchanging and the changing, except in glimpses, in dreams. They know only the variable and lose their sense of the unchanging. They live entirely in a disjointed phenomenal world of space and time, and what is unbroken, transcendent of space and time: God, eternity, incorporeal forces, are all imagined separately in space and time, in the manner of phenomena in motion: thus human primordial knowledge becomes a confused fable. Some see the absurdity of this fable, and therefore deny God and the immortality of the soul and the afterlife; others, out of cowardice, want at all costs to believe in the impossible fable. The tragedy of the Iron Age is that the Iron Age man is a fool if he is an unbeliever and a greater fool if he is a believer. The good will to strive for truth, goodness and beauty is mostly there, but it is as hopeless as the flight of a bird without wings. Truth is replaced by a hundred different views, science by data-crunching and popularising mass-cultivation. Goodness has been replaced by sentimentality, which, while in one place it is moved to tears and dispenses sugar and honey, in another it is hateful and mercilessly strips. The law is replaced by all sorts of decrees which have nothing to do with morality, they are dictated by the interests of the ruling party; if the ruling party changes, what a day before you were in prison for, now you are placed by the meat pot for the same thing, and what a day before you were decorated, now you are hanged for the same thing. In the Iron Age, there are only guards and prisoners, and every time there is a change of regime, these two castes are exchanged. Beauty is replaced by desirability, art by entertainment and home decoration. The man of the Iron Age is as violent as he is helpless; he organizes, arranges, controls everything, but it becomes a mess; everything he tries to build is a pothole. He never turns against the higher power, for he does not know it; he does not need a flood to destroy it: if he lives up to his potential, he is ruined.
These four epochs exist in idea-time, not in historical time; but every stage of historical time bears the stamp of one of these four epochs.
Examine whether you yourself belong to the Golden, Silver, Ore or Iron Age?

You experience the change of days and seasons: this is the external time, measured by the steady movement of the clock.
You experience the change of the disembodied contents of your person: this is the inner time, for which you have no measuring instrument, passing quickly or slowly compared to the outer time.
Inner time is also played out in the animal, the plant, the mineral, as their changing phenomena are cast like shadow-lace upon unchanging existence.
The succession of inanimate forces at work: world-flow-time.
The ebb and flow of the universal current of humanity: historical time.
These are all phenomenon-times, but they are formed by a series of changing and finite phenomena. Of a different nature is total-time, which contains the unchanging, infinite divine operation. World-creation, world-process and world-end are contained in total-time; in phenomena-time the end will never come, just as creation never occurred in it, and just as existence does not fit into it, but only its innumerable arising and passing manifestations. In every minute of the phenomena-time, creation, continuation, destruction are equally present as a finite mimesis of the infinite creation, existence, judgment; but creation, survival, judgment is not there. Phenomenon-time is not infinite, nor does it have a beginning and an end, like the circle. In total-time, creation is the beginning, survival is the middle, and judgment is the end, and they coincide just as the plus and minus infinities coincide in the point, and the infinite distance between them. Total-time, what all unchanging-endless, is point-like; and the myriad kinds of phenomena-time are encircled as nearer or farther circles.

Not a single point fits in the space. Space seems limitless only to the senses; in fact, it is narrower than a point.
That which is boundless is without coverage; that which is without coverage has the same infinite greatness and infinite smallness.
God is not only infinitely great, but also infinitely small: there is no smallness in which he is not fully contained.
God and the universe are within a single point.

Calmness is incessantly achieved in the struggle. Reality sings unceasingly through appearances. Song rests incessantly in the unchanging.

The agony of change is the inhalation of unchanging. The joy of change is the exhalation of unchanging.

"I am the variable and I am the unchangeable."
For those who don't know: creation can justly be called cruel.

Table and non-table, long and short, good and bad, eternal and ephemeral - The double Names are perfect guides to man. And he who sees beyond them: glimpses the Unnamable.
Just as day and night are halved around the globe, so are the namable dualities halved around the unnamable soul. In sleep, death and contemplation, there is no day and night, and where separation ceases, there also cease the namable dualities.

What is articulated is perceived by the soul between the boundaries; and what is unarticulated is an idea. To the boundless soul, that which is undivided is perceptible; and that which is divided is a phenomenon. To the complete soul, stumpiness is that which is dissected or unsectioned; reality is that which is beyond naming.

There are no two worlds, only one, showing to our external perception the changing series of symptoms, to our internal cognition the constant essence.
In the temporal and changing, it is perception that adjusts us; in the timeless and unchanging, it is imagination.
He who immerses himself in the basic layer of himself, the unchanging: no matter how many times he repeats it, no matter how much he knows the unchanging, he still has no perception of it. What he knows there: he does not experience, but imagines; only the unchanging leads the imagination just as the changing series of symptoms leads the perception.
Sensory experience is possible only of the variable, solid knowledge only of the constant. There is no sensory experience of the essence, only knowledge based on inner cognition; there is no solid knowledge of the phenomena, only temporary knowledge.
If the variable "is", the constant is only an idea; if the constant "is", the variable is only a ghost. "There is eternity" and "there is no eternity", "God is" and "God is not", are equally valid, whether viewed from the constant or from the variable.

In the phenomenal, God is only an idea; in God, the phenomenal is only a ghost.
God is not present in the perceptibility of things. Things turn their backs to perception and their colours to God. God is present in the common essence of things, but is not present in the many perceptible manifestations of things, where a host of phenomena ripple.

Take care whether you think light or dark; for what you have thought you have created.
Nature creates in the natural world, the soul in the spiritual world. When you make a garment, furniture, whatever, you first think it out, that is, you create it in the world of the soul, and only then do you make it in the world of nature, with your natural tools. Your true creation is not in nature, but in the soul; one is sooner or later destroyed, another is ingrained in the moment of its creation. And he who exists not in the present, nor in time, but pervades the whole of time: he watches your creation.

The imagination links the temporal with the timeless, which is why its contents are half-measures: they have a temporal, changing mode of appearance and a timeless, unchanging essence. The contents of the imagination: a religious concept, a moral law, an artistic creation, change their mode of appearance and eventually perish; their essence is non-existent and non-vanishing.
Religions, myths, methods of divination are created by the human imagination, like works of art. Which does not mean that they are invalid; in fact, it means that they are valid. Because imagination, unlike emotion and reason, does not operate according to the contingency of the temporal world, but according to the law of the timeless.

Read poems in languages you don't understand. Not a lot, just a few lines at a time, but several in a row. Ignore their meanings, but if possible know their original pronunciation and sound.
This way you will get to know the music of languages and the inner music of the creative souls. And you can come to the point where you can read the texts of your mother tongue independently of their content; only in this way can you experience the inner, true beauty of the poem, its disembodied dance.

"Is jasmine gentle, or do I have the gentleness that jasmine evokes? Is the marigold insidious, or do I have the insidiousness that the marigold evokes?" "The outside and the inside are essentially the same."
"Is the grain of dust small, or is there in me the smallness that the grain of dust evokes? Is the mountain large, or do I have the greatness that the mountain recalls?"
"The outer and the inner are essentially the same."

The potential to create is within man and his means, but artistic creation is a superhuman miracle.
What makes beautiful works of art beautiful, we search in vain among the facts of the phenomenal world. Masterpieces may be simple, complex, ordered, personal, perfect, primitive; so too are works of contemplation. It is only that the masterpiece has that wonderful elasticity which is lacking in the contemporaneous work and which cannot be deduced from the circumstances of the phenomenal world.
In the masterpiece, through the imagination of the creator and the artist, the timeless is transcended into the temporal world.

I heard it from my painter friend Árpád Illés:
- There is nothing distasteful in nature. In fact: it even corrects and repairs human bad taste. Look at a tramcar: a yellowed, hideous box.
But if you look at the city from the hill, the colours match and the moving little yellow trams enrich the view. Or buy an ugly chandelier, the kind you see in most bourgeois homes: take it out to the woods, bury it in the ground among the roots, go get it in a few months and you'll see nature beautify it as much as possible.
I have heard this from him and other painters:
- It's worth contemplating the patches and cracks forming on damp, decaying walls. There are no nicer drawings, no nicer groups of colours anywhere. The solid or thousand-spined lines of the stains are in a perfect harmony that human art can only attain in its purest periods. And of the most varied colours, the greens, blues, yellowish tints of grey, reds, dull-greens, rust-colours, always in simple and vast harmony. But the human eye is accustomed to fairground junk and has difficulty adjusting to the divine-beautiful.

In nature, there are always beautiful shapes and groups of colours. Look at a worm or a piece of manure: it too has a beautiful colour and shape.
If man takes something from nature to mould it to his own wishes, he more or less eclipses the original beauty, and makes it sometimes beautiful, mostly ugly.
Nature is the infinite creator of infinite beauty. Human creations are works of finite creation of varying beauty.

The young face, with its alternating fairies of joy and sadness: a moving, sparkling, swirling, seductive beauty.
The old face, with its firm forms, its even network of wrinkles: an uninviting, introspective, majestic, serene beauty.
Today's man is attracted by sensuality, he knows only the seductive-beautiful, and has few eyes for the great beauty of the old face.
And they mostly despise their young faces, make them the poster of their sex: and they despise their old faces, for they keep the miserable wreck of youth upon them.

"Come fly with me," says the wasp to the flower.
"Cling to the branch beside me," says the flower to the wasp.

The main form of disruption of completeness is that it becomes female and male. The infant who is only approaching womanhood or manhood is as complete as the being who rises above individual separateness, who unites womanhood and manhood, dissolves them into the unchangeable.
Just as the female body and the male body need to be completed, so the female soul and the male soul are incomplete. Woman knows not light, man knows not warmth. Woman lacks the true creative power, man lacks the true life-force. Woman, if she strives for the lasting treasure of humanity, only truly grasps what is in her like a moving, lively, effervescent event: she regards the temple of creation as a snack-bar, a gossip corner. The man, when he is in the sweet games and warm intimacy of human breeding, becomes obscured, mechanized: he sees the temple of life as an occasion for comfort. The woman floats in the moving, hot current of life, detached, and only looks at that which is organically connected, breeding, nature: the man paddles in the universe, enclosed, and contemplates the objects of his interest as islands.
If a man sometimes sees into the soul of a woman, or observes a woman hidden beneath her own male being: he sees that in the reddish twilight, formless things that are washed into each other live in a hot pulsation like germs: if a man's soul or a man's being hidden within himself is revealed to the woman: she sees that things shimmer in a bluish grey light, separated from each other, statue-like.
A woman, when she works, radiates her joys, her sorrows, her whole world into her work; a man, when he works, shuts everything else out. The woman, when she plays cards, dissolves herself in the group of players and wants to win from the players: the man, when he plays cards, is drawn to the vicissitudes of the game and wants to win at the game. A woman, when she opens an orange and offers you a few cloves of it with a good heart, has almost opened herself, offering you from her own world of feeling what is hers to give you: a man, when he offers you food with a good heart, is glad to give you what is his. A woman wants to merge the life of the man she loves with her own life; a man wants to draw the woman he loves more closely to his own being. The woman seeks in love the intoxicating fulfilment of her life; the man seeks in love the intoxicating, ever-increasing wholeness of his.
The needs of woman and man do not overlap: that is why the woman's complement is not the excellent creative man, but the cavalier who is always hurrying and who is always carrying her along, dazzling her again and again, until this double flight finally becomes a family security; and the complement of the man is not the excellent, vitalizing woman, but the enchantress, who can stimulate his senses, and through this, enrapture his whole being, and, moreover, take over his convictions, his preferences, his plans. As it is rare for a woman to find in one person the cavalier and the head of the family, and a man the enchantress and the adaptable, hence the many disappointments.
A man's being is a hard core, a woman's being is all references. Family, wealth and other circumstances are, for the man, the shapers of his life: for the woman, life itself. A man can be truly known by examining him in himself, free from his circumstances; a woman by examining her relations to people and circumstances.
If a woman's novel is about the 'ideal man': a great conqueror of women, the perfect head of a family, a brave and decisive man, a man of great talent in everything, but we do not know where all this excellence fits in, because his being is no more than a dressed-up man-face in a clothes shop window. And the 'ideal woman' in the man's novel is all rosy delicacy and golden cleverness, but the only real aspect of her is that she is madly in love with the male hero, with whom the writer and the reader identify themselves involuntarily: she floats through the world as groundlessly as the sweet angels in Christmas cards.
Which is worth more: the woman or the man? It doesn't matter. Either can reach the ultimate: wholeness. But each in a different way: the man develops his own closed being into an ever more open, fuller one; the woman, like a soft warmth, flies into the ultimate soft, warm nest.

That which has not yet started on the road, or is at the beginning of the road - the stone, the baby - has not yet acquired any treasure for itself, and is in itself worthy of love. And the being who has arrived at perfection, who has already absorbed the treasures he has acquired and has nothing, just like the stone or the infant: he is also worthy of love in itself. And the not-yet-departed and the already-arrived are the same.
The man on the way of increase, who is crumbling under half-acquired truncated treasures, can only be loved from the delusion of the mischief of idle treasures, or from kinship, or from compassion, or from the heatless, perfect equanimity of infinite love.

Observe the uninterrupted flow of phenomena: all different and always different and yet always the same. Observe the aches and pains of your body: from the dull ache to the sharp flash of pain, how many varieties! And they are constantly changing, layered on top of each other, like the motifs of a musical score, or the lacework of leaves, twigs and flowers on a tree. Observe the intertwining of goodwill, passion, lies, violence in history, in the present and in your own everyday life: all that you know to be bad, ugly, petty, in itself, weaves itself into a harmony as harmonious as the wandering of clouds or the chain of mountain peaks.
Life must be understood like a piece of music. If you can disassociate yourself from all the pleasant or unpleasant effects that the things of life, one by one, have on your individuality: you will recognize the common beauty in the play of the waves and the aches and pains of your body and the alternation of events and the flow of your feelings and thoughts and everything. All different and always different and yet always the same. Pay attention not to the role and effect of things, but to their pattern and pace: only in this way can you understand life, nature, your fellow human beings and yourself.

A moving object can be injured, movement is inviolable; the things of life can be injured, life is inviolable. Recognize separately in yourself that which is moving and is the thing of life: all that is your temporary part; and that which is movement and is life itself: all that is your final whole.

Would you swap fates with someone?
Do you want to be rich? You would trade your wealth with a billionaire, but not your destiny. Would you like to be a people pleaser? With the king or the people's leader you would trade your power, but not your destiny. Would you like to be a saint? With a saint you would exchange your state of development, but not your destiny.
Each man can bear only his own fate; he would collapse under the fate of another.
Fate gives to each one the food that is alone suited to him; but he who cannot like all flavours alike, gnaws one food with satisfaction, and is nauseated by another; and digests one food with difficulty because he is greedy to gobble it, and another because he would spit it out.

The natural need of childhood: freedom. And today's child is caged by constraints.
The natural need of adulthood: life. And today's adult either barely lives, or lives at the expense of himself and others, on hidden paths.
The natural need of old age: rest. And today's old man, as if his earlier needs could not be satisfied, wants freedom and life even at the edge of the grave.

The individual man abhors old age: he regards it as a debilitation, a helplessness, an undeserved humiliation. The true man does not abhor old age, for in it he can attain his undisturbed unfolding; his years are steps, higher and higher.
If you fear not sickness, misery, old age, death, any calamity: for you, old age will be a more and more certain fulfilment, poverty a burdenless freedom, any misery an increase, and you will know death before you die.

Virtue is that which conforms to the eternal standard and lifts us up to perfection; sin is that which opposes the eternal standard and moves us away from perfection.
He who attains to perfection is identified with the eternal measure: he has no virtue and no more sin; just as the nature of fire is not virtue but light, so the nature of a being identified with perfection is not virtue but action according to the eternal measure. In wholeness there is no good and evil, no merit and fault, no reward and punishment.

It is in vain to avoid sin, if you leave the false virtue to yourself. The more virtue and sin are developed, the broader they are; the more pseudo-virtue is developed, the more convulsive it is. Virtue can always be made of sin, but out of pseudo-virtue it is difficult.
All pseudo-virtues prey on some real virtue, with which they are mistaken. Religious virtue is the impatient denominationalism and pious piety, patriotism is violent chauvinism, philanthropy is the self-important public zeal, science is the pseudo-scientific tunnel vision, art is the social urgency of art-artistic patronage, of everyday diligence, the mud-slinging toil; of goodness, the dripping-hearted charity and intrusive consolation; of loving honesty, the spouse-fishing greed and rummaging in other people's dirty laundry, etc.
Virtue is never violent; by contrast, the motto of any pseudo-virtue might be, "What I do not do, no one else may do."
The pseudo-virtues strangle faith, truth, morality, knowledge, beauty; they poison all that is the permanent treasure of humanity by making their own fragmentation obligatory by reference to them.

Morality, which you wear compulsively and unkindly: it is not virtue, but weakness.
Virtue is always prominent. There is no sin that is not nearer to virtue than a multitude of shrinking pseudo-virtues.
If you have virtue, the test of it is that you feel not the yoke of your virtue, but its splendor, its lusciousness, its power.
If you're virtuous, the test of it is that you love virtue and sin alike, and without covetousness.