h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thus while he spake, each passion dimmed his face,

Thrice changed with pale - ire, envy, and despair;

Which marred his borrowed visage, and betrayed

Him counterfeit, if any eye beheld;

For Heavenly minds from such distempers foul

Are ever clear.




From Paradise Lost, John Milton.

"... Mute! yet I can read
A wondrous lesson in thy silent face:
Knowledge enormous makes a God of me.
Names, deeds, gray legends, dire events, rebellions,
Majesties, sovran voices, agonies, 115
Creations and destroyings, all at once
Pour into the wide hollows of my brain,
And deify me, as if some blithe wine
Or bright elixir peerless I had drunk,
And so become immortal.”

Apollo, Hyperion, Keats

Mars is braw in crammasy,
Venus in a green silk goun,
The auld mune shak's her gowden feathers,
Their starry talk's a wheen o' blethers,
Nane for thee a thochtie sparin'
Earth, thou bonnie broukit bairn!
- But greet, an' in your tears ye'll drown
The haill clanjamfrie!

The Bonnie Broukit Bairn - Hugh McDiarmid



Is this just random poetry, or is there a message?
http://bonobopomes.blogspot.com/

Meanwhile...I'm about to have a wee rant against Stephen Fry's 'Odes' book on the 'What vook...' thread.

There is a road to Damascus message.

So affecting that great literature/art/poetry is always what I turn to at such moments.

But its fun for people to take it anyway they want...

All my sympathies are for Satan in Paradise lost. But I like the ambiguity, that he is described as 'counterfeit' 'false' and this is betrayed by the passions of ire, envy and despair appearing on his face. Proper nice heavenly angels are apparently free of these foul distempers. But its his very 'realness' that means he's not counterfeit, (false) to me. All heavenly beautificness strikes me as far more artificial; only suited to an easy more dead than alive kind existance in heaven. Easy street by all accounts.

Foul distempers are pretty dammed real and called passions.

He risks all and becomes the fallen angel, because he risks 'life'

And he's a darn site more sexy than christus.

I like all the ambiguities you get in darn good top notch literature.

And I doubt very much that Satan messed around with some silly, woosy technique like kenosis

Yeah that's it. Satan stands up to great autocrat GOD, and is cast out. All the goody 2shoes angels that tug the forelock to GOD all the time, stay with him in heaven, singing passionless twaddle all day.

To be the Horned One's lawyer for a moment I always thought that the comfort that blind faith gives some of us is supposed to be a faint shadow of the great, perpetual, heroin-like state that heaven is supposed to be. So passionless is less the adjective than delirious might be.

Which is why there's a Christian rock band called 'Delirious?'...

*in an acutely disturbed state of mind resulting from illness or intoxication and characterized by restlessness, illusions, and incoherence of thought and speech.*

Sell, sure....

Vicky, Christian rock bands are......

Awe-full?

No that's the problem. There's no shock and awe...

I hear you, it's all blind devotion and brainless praise set to weak melody. Give me Sympathy For The Devil any day!

Christian Rock:

I know I've already quoted this a few time, but it bears endless repetition.

Anthony H Wilson on seeing The Sex Pistols at the Manchester Free Trade Hall:

"Rock'n'Roll all started when Robert Johnson met the devil at the crossroads and sold his soul to him - and when you saw John Lydon up there on stage, you thought, 'Actually...it was a pretty good deal.'"

The Sick Rose.


O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.


William Blake