CULTURAL EXPLORATION

From one object to an entire cultural map

Begin with a work, person, period, place, tradition or theme. Every card leads to public content and relationships that have passed the same publication gate.

Works & expressions

Works & expressions

1196 public objects
Proverb

Common fame is a common liar.

A main proverb preserved in Walter K. Kelly's British-centered 1859 comparative collection. The exact oral origin is not asserted, and the historical saying is not presented as present-day fact or advice.

Proverb

Common fame is seldom to blame.

A main proverb preserved in Walter K. Kelly's British-centered 1859 comparative collection. The exact oral origin is not asserted, and the historical saying is not presented as present-day fact or advice.

Proverb

Comparisons are odious.

A main proverb preserved in Walter K. Kelly's British-centered 1859 comparative collection. The exact oral origin is not asserted, and the historical saying is not presented as present-day fact or advice.

Fable

Concerning the Hawk and the Owl

Public-domain English source text from Elphinstone Dayrell’s 1910 collection. This colonial-era retelling is preserved as a historical source, not presented as a contemporary or exhaustive account of Nigerian culture.

Proverb

Constant dropping wears the stone.

A main proverb preserved in Walter K. Kelly's British-centered 1859 comparative collection. The exact oral origin is not asserted, and the historical saying is not presented as present-day fact or advice.

Proverb

Covetousness brings nothing home.

A main proverb preserved in Walter K. Kelly's British-centered 1859 comparative collection. The exact oral origin is not asserted, and the historical saying is not presented as present-day fact or advice.

Poetry

Cradle Song

A lullaby over a sleeping infant traces soft desires, secret smiles and morning-like smiles stealing over its face, then turns to the cunning wiles creeping in the sleeping heart and warns that when that heart wakes a dreadful night will break.

Proverb

Custom is second nature.

A main proverb preserved in Walter K. Kelly's British-centered 1859 comparative collection. The exact oral origin is not asserted, and the historical saying is not presented as present-day fact or advice.

Proverb

Cut your coat according to your cloth.

A main proverb preserved in Walter K. Kelly's British-centered 1859 comparative collection. The exact oral origin is not asserted, and the historical saying is not presented as present-day fact or advice.

Poetry

Daffodils

A field of daffodils returns to the solitary mind after the encounter, showing how remembered beauty can continue to nourish feeling.

Poetry

Death

The speaker defies personified Death as a servant of fate and chance, ending with the paradox that death itself will die.

Poetry

Deer Enclosure

鹿柴

On the empty mountain no one is seen, yet the sound of human voices carries. Returning light enters the deep wood and shines once more on the green moss.

Proverb

Delays are dangerous.

A main proverb preserved in Walter K. Kelly's British-centered 1859 comparative collection. The exact oral origin is not asserted, and the historical saying is not presented as present-day fact or advice.

Poetry

Delight in Disorder

A list of slightly disarranged details of dress—a thrown lawn, a straying lace, a careless shoe-string—builds to the claim that such 'wild civility' bewitches the speaker more than art that is too precise in every part.

Poetry

Departing Baidi City at Dawn

早发白帝城

At dawn I leave Baidi amid rose-tinted clouds; a thousand li to Jiangling, returned in a single day. Gibbons call without cease from both banks, while my light boat has already passed ten thousand mountains.

Poetry

Desideria

Surprised by a moment of joy, the speaker turns instinctively to share it with someone buried in the grave, and the return of that knowledge—together with the discovery that he had briefly forgotten—becomes the worst pang except the moment of the loss itself.

Poetry

Dirge

A speaker who says he has been slain by a cruel beloved calls on death to come, orders his own shroud and coffin, and asks to be buried where no flower, friend or grieving lover can ever find the grave.

Poetry

Discipline

The speaker repeatedly asks God to throw away rod and wrath, pleads a willing though stumbling obedience, and argues that love, armed like an archer, will do what anger cannot.