Saturday, September 07, 2013

Hmm …

… Old Chestnuts | Time's Flow Stemmed. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

I now wish that I had spent somewhat more of my life with verse. This is not because I fear having missed out on truths that are incapable of statement in prose. There are no such truths; there is nothing about death that Swinburne and Landor knew but Epicurus and Heidegger failed to grasp. 
This seems to me to indicate a fundamental misunderstanding. Effective poetry fuses form and subject, sound and sense. It isn't that it tells a different truth, but rather that it tells whatever truth it tells in the truest way, with the fewest and most precise words. There is a very short poem by a Japanese noblewoman about the death of her son. It goes something like this: "Where is he now / The brave hunter of dragonflies?" I think that says something about death that Epicurus and Heidegger may well have failed to grasp.

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