What a fine example.
RK
>Roger's wise comments find confirmation in the Book of Job, when Job's
>friends' first arrive, "they sat down with him upon the ground seven days
>and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his
>grief was very great" (2:13).
>
>Peter C. Herman
>
>At 10:48 PM 2/21/2004 +0100, you wrote:
>>As I recall, the centre of the Vita Nuova has exactly the same kind
>>of silence around the main event: Beatrice's death. "I will not speak
>>of it now." Could moments of the greatest sorrow and the greatest
>>bliss perhaps both have wise silence as their best music?
>>
>>RK
>>
>>> > so permeable to contradiction that when (since you spoke of the
>>>> Epithalamion) he gives us a portrait of his bride, he compares her
>>>>effect on
>>>> the beholder to Medusa's.
>>>
>>>Not only does he give us a petrifying, gorgon bride, but (as I said last
>>>year on this list, about the Iraq invasion, I think) he gives us a
>>>conjugal consummation in total silence, at the culmination of a hymn. The
>>>'song made in lieu of many ornaments' has a funny, muted kind of heart.
>>>Of course by one way of thinking this 'experience of the center' is
>>>conventional; but on the other hand the dramatization of it in
>>>Epithalamion is pretty relentless, and almost (to me) as painful as the
>>>end of the Cantos of Mutabilitie. Look how the crown which Ariadne wore:
>>>at the center of the labyrinth is the terrifying presence that will
>>>release, and consume, you.
>>>
>>>az
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