Book of Whispers

"Everything visible is made of gold."
—Robert Desnos, Liberty or Love!

"Let's stay in this semidarkness while it lasts.  Notice how people and objects all look more mysterious in this dim light.  It's the phantoms of people and things we see, phantoms which, once light arrives, disappear into their unknown kingdom."
—Giorgio de Chirico, Hebdomeros

"The key to power over spiritual nature has been rusting since the flood.  It is: wakefulness.  Wakefulness is all."
—Gustav Meyrink, The Green Face

A traveler realizes "that the wild country he surveys is not an accidental assembly of natural phenomena, but the page in a book where these mountains and forests, and fields, and rivers are disposed in such a way as to form a coherent sentence; the vowel of a lake fusing with the consonant of a sibilant slope; the windings of a road writing its message in a round hand, as clear as that of one's father; trees conversing in dumb-show, making sense to one who has learnt the gestures of their language . . . Thus the traveler spells the landscape and its sense is disclosed, and likewise, the intricate pattern of human life turns out to be monogrammatic, now quite clear to the inner eye disentangling the interwoven letters." —Vladimir Navokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

"Don't be too certain of learning the past from the lips of the present.   Beware of the most honest broker.  Remember that what you are told is really threefold:  shaped by the teller, reshaped by the listener, concealed from both by the dead man of the tale." —Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

"Memory has its own special kind.  It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else's version more than his own."
—Salman Rushdie

Whispering a secret to a mask: an illustration from a 1900 issue of Pall Mall magazine.

Imagine a game of "What's My Line," in which either a cherub or an imp whispers into a blindfolded panelist's ear.

Are the following whispered words of an angelic or a diabolical nature?




Answer: Diabolical. "Mary's imp whispered in her ear all the way home, 'Forget about everyone else, and focus on yourself and your family.'” —Annamaria Q. Proctor, Intolerance, 2008, p. 52. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)

"I believe that the old mysteries conceal much more dangerous things than knowledge of phases of the moon and eclipses of the sun, things that really had to be concealed—but which do not need to be concealed nowadays because the foolish throng would not believe them anyway, only laugh at them—things that obey the same laws of harmony as the stars and which are therefore similar to them."
—Gustav Meyrink, The Green Face

Imagine a game of "What's My Line," in which either a cherub or an imp whispers into a blindfolded panelist's ear.

Are the following whispered words of an angelic or a diabolical nature?




Answer: Angelic. ""Where there's a will there's a way,' his angel whispered.” —Eddie Stack, The West, 2010, p. 112. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)

"The common pebble you find in your fist after having thrust your arm shoulder deep into water, where a jewel seemed to gleam on pale sand, is really the coveted gem though it looks like a pebble as it dries in the sun of everyday." —Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
—Rumi

Imagine a game of "What's My Line," in which either a cherub or an imp whispers into a blindfolded panelist's ear.

Are the following whispered words of an angelic or a diabolical nature?




Answer: Angelic. "Somewhere an Angel whispered 'Let the show begin.'” —Jim 'Poppa' Kelly, Love! Adventure! Happiness!, 2010, p. 611. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)

"I have learnt one secret . . . : that the soul is but a manner of being—not a constant state—that any soul may be yours, if you find and follow its undulations." —Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

Imagine a game of "What's My Line," in which either a cherub or an imp whispers into a blindfolded panelist's ear.

Are the whispered words pictured on the right of an angelic or a diabolical nature?

Answer: Angelic. "The angel whispered, 'It is enough; my task is ended. New duties await me.'” —T. S. Arthur, "The Search for Happiness,” The True Path, 1888, p. 52. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)

"That is the secret of small pieces of paper covered with words: they can prove we were here and give people some sense of us even after we are dead." —Geof Huth

Imagine a game of "What's My Line," in which either a cherub or an imp whispers into a blindfolded panelist's ear.

Are the whispered words pictured on the right of an angelic or a diabolical nature?

Answer: Diabolical. "Some demon whispered him, that he had mistaken the road to fortune, and suggested that he had better retreat in time, and endeavor to patch up his hopes by another course of life." —"The Exile,” The American Monthly Magazine, Vol. 1, 1833, p. 242. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)

Imagine a game of "What's My Line," in which either a cherub or an imp whispers into a blindfolded panelist's ear.

Are the whispered words pictured on the right of an angelic or a diabolical nature?

Answer: Diabolical. "Within me my rebellious demon whispered, 'Now is the time! Break through into the superluminous, hey?'” —Paul Goodman, The Empire City, 2001, p. 471. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)