.
![http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/Southafrica468bushman.jpg/1280px-Southafrica468bushman.jpg]()
Rock paintings from the Western Cape, Cederberg, South Africa: photo by Jimfbleak, 2007
O Earth Mother, who consents to everything, who forgives everything
don’t hide like this..........................
You (V) (Hölderlin): from TC: The Sand Burg (Ferry Press, London, 1966)
![http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/95/Karoo_sandstone_with_bushmen_paintings.jpg/1024px-Karoo_sandstone_with_bushmen_paintings.jpg]()
Sandstone with San / Bushmen rock paintings, Karoo System, Amathole Mountains, South Africa: photo by Lysippos, 16 November 2008
![http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9b/San_Painting%2C_Ukalamba_Drakensberge_1.JPG/1024px-San_Painting%2C_Ukalamba_Drakensberge_1.JPG]()
San / Bushman rock painting of an Eland, Ukalamba Dragensberge, South Africa: photo by Lukas Kaffer, 6 August 2007
![http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5b/San_-_Khoekhoen_rock_art_-_Namibia.jpg/1024px-San_-_Khoekhoen_rock_art_-_Namibia.jpg]()
San (the "dancing" Kudu) and Khoekhoen (the abstract figures) at Twyfelfontein, Namibia: photo by Hans Hillewaert, 21 June 2007
![http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Spitzkoppeko_Pintura.JPG/1024px-Spitzkoppeko_Pintura.JPG]()
Ancient Bushman rock painting, Spitzkoppe, Namibia: photo by Katxijasotzaile, 30 September 2006
Rock paintings from the Western Cape, Cederberg, South Africa: photo by Jimfbleak, 2007
O Earth Mother, who consents to everything, who forgives everything
don’t hide like this..........................
______________________________
Her Power is sweetened in these rays, the Earth before her
...........conceals the children
of her breast in her cloak, meanwhile we feel her,
and the days to come announce
that much time has passed and often one has felt
...........a heart grow for you inside his chest
They have guessed, the Ancients, the old and pious Patriarchs,
...........and in the secret they are, without even knowing it,
...........blessed
in the twisted chamber, for you, the silent men
but still more, the hearts, and those you have named Amor,
or have given obscure names, Earth, for one is shamed
to name his inmost heart, and from the start however man
when he finds greatness in himself and if the Most High permits,
He names it, this which belongs to him, and by its proper name
and you are it, and it seems
..............................
to you honor is granted from now on
and you must receive songs in its name,
and you must, while he is distant and Old Eternity
.........becomes more and more hidden every day,
take his place in front of mortals, and since
you will bear and raise children for him, his wish
is to send anew and direct toward you men’s lives
when you recognize him.......but this
directive which he inscribes in me is the rose
Pure sister, where will I get hold, when it is winter, of these
flowers, so as to weave the inhabitants of heaven crowns
..............................
as if the spirit of life passed out of me,
because for the heavenly gods these signs
of love are flowers in a desert.........I search for them, you are hidden
...........conceals the children
of her breast in her cloak, meanwhile we feel her,
and the days to come announce
that much time has passed and often one has felt
...........a heart grow for you inside his chest
They have guessed, the Ancients, the old and pious Patriarchs,
...........and in the secret they are, without even knowing it,
...........blessed
in the twisted chamber, for you, the silent men
but still more, the hearts, and those you have named Amor,
or have given obscure names, Earth, for one is shamed
to name his inmost heart, and from the start however man
when he finds greatness in himself and if the Most High permits,
He names it, this which belongs to him, and by its proper name
and you are it, and it seems
..............................
to you honor is granted from now on
and you must receive songs in its name,
and you must, while he is distant and Old Eternity
.........becomes more and more hidden every day,
take his place in front of mortals, and since
you will bear and raise children for him, his wish
is to send anew and direct toward you men’s lives
when you recognize him.......but this
directive which he inscribes in me is the rose
Pure sister, where will I get hold, when it is winter, of these
flowers, so as to weave the inhabitants of heaven crowns
..............................
as if the spirit of life passed out of me,
because for the heavenly gods these signs
of love are flowers in a desert.........I search for them, you are hidden
Sandstone with San / Bushmen rock paintings, Karoo System, Amathole Mountains, South Africa: photo by Lysippos, 16 November 2008
...the painters actualized the tiered cosmos and their journeys through it... the three levels were not merely conceptual: they were manifest in the rock shelters. The painted images of another world made sense because of their location on the 'veil', the interface between materiality and spirituality. The rock wall on which paintings were placed was not a "tabula rasa" but part of the images: in some ways, it was the support that made sense of the images. Art and cosmos united in a mutual statement about the complex nature of reality.
David Lewis-Williams on South African San rock art, in The Mind and the Cave, 2004
We must reckon with the fact that, basically, even events in the sky could be imitated by people in earlier times. Modern man can be touched with a pale shadow of this when he looks through a mask, or when, on southern moonlit nights, he feels mimetic forces alive in himself that he had thought long since dead, while nature, which possesses them all, transforms itself to remember the moon. But he is transported into this very force field by his memories of childhood. The gift we possess for seeing similarity is nothing but a feeble vestige of that powerful compulsion to become similar and to behave mimetically.
Walter Benjamin: extract from The Lamp, a fragment composed in early 1933 and unpublished in the writer's lifetime. Translated by Rodney Livingstone in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2: 1927-1934 (1999)
David Lewis-Williams on South African San rock art, in The Mind and the Cave, 2004
We must reckon with the fact that, basically, even events in the sky could be imitated by people in earlier times. Modern man can be touched with a pale shadow of this when he looks through a mask, or when, on southern moonlit nights, he feels mimetic forces alive in himself that he had thought long since dead, while nature, which possesses them all, transforms itself to remember the moon. But he is transported into this very force field by his memories of childhood. The gift we possess for seeing similarity is nothing but a feeble vestige of that powerful compulsion to become similar and to behave mimetically.
Walter Benjamin: extract from The Lamp, a fragment composed in early 1933 and unpublished in the writer's lifetime. Translated by Rodney Livingstone in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2: 1927-1934 (1999)
San / Bushman rock painting of an Eland, Ukalamba Dragensberge, South Africa: photo by Lukas Kaffer, 6 August 2007
San (the "dancing" Kudu) and Khoekhoen (the abstract figures) at Twyfelfontein, Namibia: photo by Hans Hillewaert, 21 June 2007
Ancient Bushman rock painting, Spitzkoppe, Namibia: photo by Katxijasotzaile, 30 September 2006