The Fountain.

My dear, your eyes are weary;
Rest them a little while.
Assume the languid posture
Of pleasure mixed with guile.
Outside the talkative fountain
Continues night and day
Repeating my warm passion
In whatever it has to say.

             The sheer luminous gown
                           The fountain wears
             Where Phoebe’s very own
                           Color appears
             Falls like a summer rain
                           Or shawl of tears.

Thus your soul ignited
By pleasure’s lusts and needs
Sprays into heaven’s reaches
And dreams of fiery deeds.
Then it brims over, dying,
And languorous, apart,
Drains down some slope and enters
The dark well of my heart.

             The sheer luminous gown
                           The fountain wears
             Where Phoebe’s very own
                           Color appears
             Falls like a summer rain
                           Or shawl of tears.

O you, whom night enhances,
How sweet here at your breasts
To hear the eternal sadness
Of water that never rests.
O moon, o singing fountain,
O leaf-thronged night above,
You are the faultless mirrors
Of my sweet, bitter love.

             The sheer luminous gown
                           The fountain wears
             Where Phoebe’s very own
                           Color appears
             Falls like a summer rain
                           Or shawl of tears.

Charles Baudelaire

Translated by Anthony Hecht

What did you understand to be the purpose of philosophy and your role as a philosopher?

...The point of philosophy is not 'What is the structure of all?' but 'What are the concepts the scientist already has to presuppose in order to formulate the question?' It is simply asking about what is already there: what conceptual, and other, presuppositions already have to be there so that you can say what you are saying, so that you understand what you understand, so that you know that you are doing what you are doing.

Conversations with Žižek, Slavoj Žižek and Glyn Daly