“They saw their injured country's woe;
The flaming town, the wasted field;
Then rushed to meet the insulting foe;
They took the spear, - but left the shield.”
―Philip Freneau
.
And by a prudent flight and cunning save A life which valour could not, from the grave. A better buckler I can soon regain, But who can get another life again?
Archilochus
WE'RE LIVING IN A BLACK HOLE RiGHT NOW, AREN'T WE?
IT CERTAINLY SEEMS THAT WAY.
THE WORLD HAS ALREADY EXPIRED –– "NOT WITH A BANG, BUT A WHIMPER."
the end of beauty, the end of music, the end of poetry, the end of satire, the end of hearth and home, the end of love, the realization that understanding never has and never will exist. all that appears to have been was only an illusion. existence, itself, is only an illusion, a welter of ever increasing, ever more puzzling, ever more incomprehensible, ever more threatening, ever more suffocating, ever less intriguing, ever farther removed from whatever it once meant to be human bears down on us pitilessly and relentlessly. formidable concepts foreign to what we believed it meant to be human bring about a nightmare from which it seems we may never awaken.
William Blake understood instinctively that each one of us is infinitely large and infinitely small at once.
To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour. ...
~ Wm. Blake - Auguries of Innocence
Playwright Thornton Wilder in Our Town had the Stage Manager say, when asked by the deceased Emily, who is allowed to come back to earth to observe her sixteenth birthday "Does anyone ever realize how wonderful life is while they're alive?" ... or words very much to that effect.
Only the saints and poets. They do some." was his answer.
Beethoven saw Eternal Truth, captured it, and expressed it eloquently in his late sonatas, Opera 190, 110, and 111, but only those with ears to hear could comprehend it. Bach accomplished it in the St. Matthew Passion, the Mass in B-Minor, the Chromatic Fantasy and fugue, and most of his great organ works.
All these and many other great works of Music, Art and Literature never fail to raise goose bumps and give me the shivers.
4 comments:
WE'RE LIVING IN A BLACK HOLE RiGHT NOW, AREN'T WE?
IT CERTAINLY SEEMS THAT WAY.
THE WORLD HAS ALREADY EXPIRED –– "NOT WITH A BANG, BUT A WHIMPER."
the end of beauty, the end of music, the end of poetry, the end of satire, the end of hearth and home, the end of love, the realization that understanding never has and never will exist. all that appears to have been was only an illusion. existence, itself, is only an illusion, a welter of ever increasing, ever more puzzling, ever more incomprehensible, ever more threatening, ever more suffocating, ever less intriguing, ever farther removed from whatever it once meant to be human bears down on us pitilessly and relentlessly. formidable concepts foreign to what we believed it meant to be human bring about a nightmare from which it seems we may never awaken.
How small is my "identity"? How comfortable can I be "within" it? How snarky can I be to those "outside" it?
I don't think I said that, but all right.
William Blake understood instinctively that each one of us is infinitely large and infinitely small at once.
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour. ...
~ Wm. Blake - Auguries of Innocence
Playwright Thornton Wilder in Our Town had the Stage Manager say, when asked by the deceased Emily, who is allowed to come back to earth to observe her sixteenth birthday "Does anyone ever realize how wonderful life is while they're alive?" ... or words very much to that effect.
Only the saints and poets. They do some." was his answer.
Beethoven saw Eternal Truth, captured it, and expressed it eloquently in his late sonatas, Opera 190, 110, and 111, but only those with ears to hear could comprehend it. Bach accomplished it in the St. Matthew Passion, the Mass in B-Minor, the Chromatic Fantasy and fugue, and most of his great organ works.
All these and many other great works of Music, Art and Literature never fail to raise goose bumps and give me the shivers.
That was Opus 109, not 190. Sorry!
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