Right now, I'm thinking a fair bit of Yeats' words that the "best lack all
conviction, while the worst / are fired with a passionate intensity"
(apologies if I've misquoted) which I never so poignantly saw the point of
- I used to think it was a cynical statement.
Yes, life is symbolic of nothing, it is itself, and human beings seem very
eager to forget this. Perhaps it is too difficult to deal with. But I am
tired of symbols.
A
>Perhaps it is worth pointing out (on the subject of "symbolism") that the
>screams of children everywhere, now,(spoken of so pertinently by Dominic)
>express but are not for themselves >symbolic< of dreadful fear of mutilation
>& death: they are not yet (while they scream) "the ghosts of themselves"
>though perhaps "lifting distressful hands as if to bless"; but there _is_ a
>lot of very symbolic gesticulation going on, some of it on this list. I
>think heartfelt response would be more appropriate than threatening to dig
>an SKK rifle out of the garden to "shoot back" at a few local extremists or
>than throwing terms like "crucifixion" around rather wildly, as Robin points
>out. Marx himself, of course, wasn't above (or below?) gesticulating
>symbolically & frothing at the mouth, poor misunderstood genius. The trouble
>is that the gestures, the blarings of the politicians and attendant "media"
>are an accompaniment to actual horrors: drums & cymbals,war music that
>paradoxically causes forgetting of what is & has been happening. I don't
>think that even hoping for a later more peaceful species to replace us, or
>reflection on the bad manners of the dinosaurs, should or (better) can
>distract us from the pain of living now, though I do understand the symbolic
>despair of your words, Erminia. But why do you so easily assume that nobody
>has ever achieved "something different" & speak only of failure? This is
>close to idolizing History, which "to the defeated/May say Alas but cannot
>help or pardon".
>best
>Martin
Alison Croggon
Home page
http://users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
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