Cumaean Sibyl

It's also about the callousness of the army and, in Wozzeck's case, of doctors, which felt like Karl Krauss's First World War novel, The Last Days of Mankind.

I want to go to the Sibyl, Mr. Kentridge, and I think a lot of people would just adore that room in the exhibition.

The Sibyl is also going to be performed in Antwerp, that is in November.

Why did you want to do something with this marvelous character?

The Sibyl, and the Sibyl of Kumai specifically, Kumai is a little town just outside Naples where the Kumayan Sibyl lived from classical antiquity.

The story of the Sybil was that she was a prophetess.

She would tell you the future.

If you read Greek mythology, there's always references to different oracles, the Sibylline Oracle.

We're about to go to Italy, and there's some places around Naples where there's the Cumaean Oracle, right? So different localities have their oracle.

So we're talking about an oracle.

We're talking about someone who had connections to the spiritual realm, right? People would go to the Oracle to seek answers that were, for the most part, hidden.

During these centuries, the sacred house was built along with the temples dedicated to Dion, Heracles, Themis, and Aphrodite.

I love thinking about the sacredness of oaks to these oracles anywhere that oaks are found, whether it's with the Druids of Europe or the Cumaean Sibyl who we've spoken about in earlier episodes.

Sacred to the goddess of the crossroads, Hecate, we know oaks to be doors.

Aside from the materials of the oaks, lead was also used as a part of the petition for the oracles, how the question was carved and then asked.

We visited the so-called Elysian Fields and Avernus, and wandered through various ruined temples, baths, and classic spots.

At length we entered the gloomy cavern of the Cumaean Sibyl.

Our lazzaroni bore flaring torches which shone red and almost dusky in the murky subterranean passages, whose darkness thirstily surrounded them, seeming eager to imbibe more and more of the element of light.

We passed by a natural archway leading to a second gallery and inquired if we could not enter there also.

Sometimes I have thought that, obscure and chaotic as they are, they owe their present form to me, their decipherer.

As if we should give to another artist the painted fragments which form the Mosaic copy of Raphael's Transfiguration in St. Peter's, he would put them together in a form, whose mode would be fashioned by his own peculiar mind and talent.

Doubtless the leaves of the Cumaean Sibyl have suffered distortion and diminution of interest and excellence in my hands.

My only excuse for thus transforming them is that they were unintelligible in their pristine condition.