January 23, 2009
-
Fish Story:
The Beadsman
Archbishop Jadot,
former papal envoy
to the United States,
died at 99 on
St. Agnes's Day,
January 21, 2009.Stanley Fish in today's
New York Times --
Barack Obama's Prose Style:"... he carries us
from meditative bead
to meditative bead....""Numb were the Beadsman's fingers,
while he toldHis rosary, and while
his frosted breath,Like pious incense
from a censer old,Seem'd taking flight for heaven,
without a death...."-- John Keats
"The word not only brings the things out of silence; it also produces the silence in which they can disappear again."
-- Max Picard, The World of Silence,
quoted here on January 15"Let the word go forth...."
-- John Fitzgerald Kennedy, quoted here
on January 20 -- The Eve of St. Agnes
Related material:Fish contrasts President Obama's prose style with one that "asks the reader or hearer to hold in suspension the components of an argument that will not fully emerge until the final word."
See also the final word of this journal's entry on January 21, which was "Keats."
