The reason why so remarkably few young poets continue nowadays to
publish poetry after their early twenties is...that something dies in
the poet. Perhaps he has compromised his poetic intergrity by valuing
some range of experience or other - literary, religious,
philosophical, dramatic, political, or social - above the poetic. But
perhaps also he has lost his sense of the White Goddess: the woman
whom he took to be a Muse, or who was a Muse, turns into a domestic
woman and would have him turn similarly into a domesticated man.
...The White Goddess is anti-domestic; she is the perpetual 'other
woman', and her part is difficult indeed for a woman of sensibility to
play for more than a few years, because the temptation to commit
suicide in simple domesticity lurks in every mænad's and muse's heart.
-- Robert
Graves, The White Goddess
Ach, solt ich das kind wiegen, die windell wasschen, bette machen,
stanck riechen, die nacht wachen, seyns screiens wartten, seyn grindt
und blattern heylen, darnach des weybs pflegen, sie erneeren,
erbeytten, hie sorgen, da sorgen, hie thun, da thun, das leyden und
diss leyden?
-- Martin Luther,
Predigt vom ehelichen Leben
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Jon Corelis www.geocities.com/jgcorelis/
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