"... Since you, great Sir, more charming fair appear,
Scattering the mists of faction with our fear.
Shine thus for many years, and let the sight
Your friends encourage and your foes affright,
Like Joshua's sun, with undiminished light."
Henry Purcell Song for Charles II, 1682
"An ancient people
restored to youth
by rebellion and to
rebellion by youth
can seem very sinister."
Prisoner of Love
Jean Genet, 1986
a gorgeous collection here....
ReplyDeletedavid
YHBHS
Very kind, considering your mastery of the form. I would like to acknowledge the influence of your work but my struggles with the mechanics of presentation make that claim very premature. Nice of you to examine the space.
ReplyDeletewon't forget
ReplyDeleteI have been accused of being a pacifist by several friends over the last few years. I can never accept a generation fed on war, or the loss of generation that is never prepared for that it. It baffles the mind that WE still find flesh so expendable in our age of technology. That saying youth is wasted on the young- Youth is just wasted by War and Men. a Beautiful thought provoking set of images with few words.pgt
ReplyDeleteThank you both. Any efficiency in this posting is indebted to Genet for domiciling it, for Purcell for stating our blithe indifference so unforgettably, and to somebody whose genius no one can summarily invoke by symbolic reference. He, of course, is André Gide.
ReplyDeleteHis vision of “the flesh” is that of every conscientious humanist, and carries the perception of it so far past praise or sympathy, past delectation, and past itself, as finally to allow its virtues to acquire the focus to "plead like angels" in Macbeth, against "the deep damnation of its taking off." That vision is why I do not hesitate to invoke the flesh in its projection: it is unanswerably there.
lovely!
ReplyDeleteBulls eye.
ReplyDelete:)