December 24, 2006

  • Christmas Eve Story, Part I:

     The Edge of Eternity

    (in memory of George Latshaw,

    who died on Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2006)

    Log24 on October 25, 2005:

    Brightness Doubled

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    Seven is Heaven

    "Love is the shadow
       that ripens the vine.

    Set the controls for
       the heart of the Sun.

    Witness the man who
       raves at the wall
    Making the shape of his
       questions to Heaven.
    Knowing the sun will fall
       in the evening,
    Will he remember the
       lessons of giving?
    Set the controls for
       the heart of the Sun.
    Set the controls for
       the heart of the Sun."

    -- Roger Waters, quoted in

        Allusions to Classical

        Chinese Poetry in Pink Floyd




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    Click on picture for details.

    Related material:



    Part I --

    Wordsworth



    Adapted from

    Brenda Garrett's

    "At Home in Landscape:

    Mannheim's Chiliastic Mentality

    in 'Tintern Abbey'    "

    Garrett comments on Wordsworth's approach to landscape, citing Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, translated by Louis Wirth and Edward
    Shils (page numbers below refer to the 1998 Routledge edition):

    "... 'the present becomes the breach through which what was previously
    inward, bursts out suddenly, takes hold of the outer world and transforms
    it' [p. 193]. This breaking through into ecstasy can only be brought about through
    'Kairos' or 'fulfilled time'"....

    See translators' note, p. 198: "In Greek mythology Kairos
    is the God of Opportunity-- the genius of the decisive moment.  The
    Christianized notion of this is given thus in Paul Tillich's The
    Religious Situation     [1925, translation by H. Richard Niebuhr, New York, Holt, 1932, pp.
    138-139]: 'Kairos is fulfilled time, the moment of time which is invaded by eternity.  But Kairos is not perfection or completion in time.'"

    Garrett quotes Wordsworth's 1850 Prelude:

    There are in our existence spots of time,
    That with distinct pre-eminence retain
    A renovating virtue ... (12.208-210)

    "And in book 14 Wordsworth.... symbolizes
    how man can find transcendent unity with the universe through the image of
    himself leading his group to the peak of Mt. Snowdon. Climbing at night in
    thick fog, he almost steps off a cliff, but at the last instant, he steps
    out of the mist, the moon appears, and his location on the brink is revealed.
    Walking in the darkness of reason, his imagination illumed the night, revealed
    the invisible world, and spared him his life."

    See also Charles Frazier on the edge of eternity:

    "They climbed to a bend and from there they
    walked on great slabs of rock. It seemed to Inman that they were at the
    lip of a cliff, for the smell of the thin air spoke of considerable
    height, though the fog closed off all visual check of loftiness....
    Then he looked back down and felt a rush of vertigo as the
    lower world was suddenly revealed between his boot toes. He
    was indeed at the lip of a cliff, and he took one step back...."

    -- Cold Mountain


    Part II -- 7/15

    From Log24 on 7/15, 2005:

    Christopher Fry's obituary
    in The New York Times--

    "His
    plays radiated

    an optimistic faith in God

    and humanity, evoking,

    in his
    words, 'a world

    in which we are poised

    on the edge of eternity,

    a world
    which has

    deeps and shadows

    of mystery,

    and God is anything but

    a
    sleeping partner.'"



    Accompanying illustration:



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    Adapted from cover of

    German edition of Cold Mountain