Saturday 8 October 2016

wrapped and rapt in the fire of purification and you, unprepared for the gift of me raw and undone, i see you. you who is he, she, me. be not fooled by the smile. i see you.  behind the masks, beneath the skins, emerging unwavering, growing upwards and out of the fertile earth of your self. i think maybe you are a bolt of light. come closer.

3 comments:

tentaculitidae said...

... many instances of earthly beauty – a song, the twilit sea, the tone of the lyre, the voice of a boy, a verse, a statue, a column, a garden, a single flower – all possess the divine faculty of making man hearken unto the innermost and outermost boundaries of his existence, and therefore it is not to be wondered at that the lofty art of Orpheus was esteemed to have the power of diverting the streams from their beds and changing their courses, of luring the wild beasts of the forest with tender dominance, of arresting the cattle a-browse upon the meadows and moving them to listen, caught in the dream and enchanted, the dreamwish of all art: the world compelled to listen, ready to receive the song and its salvation. However, even had Orpheus achieved his aim, the help lasts no longer than the song, nor does the listening, and on no account might the song resound too long, otherwise the streams would return to their old courses, the wild beasts of the forest would again fall upon and slay the innocent beasts of the field, and man would revert again to his old, habitual cruelty; for not only did no intoxication last long, and this was likewise true of beauty’s spell, but furthermore, the mildness to which men and beasts had yielded was only half of the intoxication of beauty, while the other half, not less strong and for the most part far stronger, was of such surpassing and terrible cruelty – the most cruel of men delights himself with a flower – that beauty, and before all the beauty born of art, failed quickly of its effect if in disregard of the reciprocal balance of its two components it approached man with but one of them.

Hermann Broch, from “The Death of Virgil”

cloudgathererholdmedown said...

wow, that's a mouthful of a tricky to fathom snippet!

tentaculitidae said...

The book reads like a waterfall. It's maddening and beautiful... my copy is cluttered with strips of paper marking specific passages. One of those life-changing fifty eurocent flea market finds. I hope you're well!