February 17, 2003
-
Center of Time
Am I….
your fantasy girl
of puzzling parts?
Machine ballerina?
From the
Saint Matthew Passion
(1729), by
Johann Sebastian Bach
“The old man of ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ imagined the city’s power as being able to ‘gather’ him into ‘the artifice of eternity’— presumably into ‘monuments of unageing intellect,’ immortal and changeless structures representative of or embodying all knowledge, linked like a perfect machine at the center of time.”
— Karl Parker, Yeats’ Two Byzantiums
“I wrote Fermata listening to Suzanne Vega, particularly her album ’99.9° F.’ It affected my mood in just the right way. I found a kind of maniacal intensity in her music that helped me as I typed. So if Fermata is attacked, maybe I can say i’m not responsible because I was under the spell of Suzanne Vega.”
— Nicholson Baker, interview
For some real monuments of unageing intellect, see “Geometrie” in the weblog of Andrea for February 10, 2003.
