August 28, 2003
-
Spirit
In memory of
Walter J. Ong, S. J.,
professor emeritus
at St. Louis University,
St. Louis, Missouri
“The Garden of Eden is behind us
and there is no road back to innocence;
we can only go forward.”
— Anne Morrow Lindbergh,
Earth Shine, p. xii
Earth Shine, p. xiii:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
— T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets.
Eliot was a native of St. Louis.
“Every city has its gates, which need not be of stone. Nor need soldiers be upon them or watchers before them. At first, when cities were jewels in a dark and mysterious world, they tended to be round and they had protective walls. To enter, one had to pass through gates, the reward for which was shelter from the overwhelming forests and seas, the merciless and taxing expanse of greens, whites, and blues–wild and free–that stopped at the city walls.
In time the ramparts became higher and the gates more massive, until they simply disappeared and were replaced by barriers, subtler than stone, that girded every city like a crown and held in its spirit.”
— Mark Helprin, Winter’s Tale
Book Cover,
1954:
“The pattern of the heavens
and high, night air”
— Wallace Stevens,
An Ordinary Evening in New Haven
See also my notes of
Monday, August 25, 2003
(the feast day of Saint Louis,
for whom the city is named).
For a more Eden-like city,
see my note of
October 23, 2002,
on Cuernavaca, Mexico,
where Charles Lindbergh
courted Anne Morrow.
