--On Friday, September 14, 2001 2:23 AM +0000 Nikki Barranger
<Nikkibar@AOL.COM> wrote:
> Dear Friends,
>
> I too thought of the Percy schaddenfreud paradox as I watched the 911
> horror. And then it occurred to me that it wasn't working even a little
> bit.
Yes, I noticed the same. Perhaps it is too soon to speculate why. My
feeling is that it is over; we are not looking forward to war or a
hurricane, but to a devasting blow delivered and past.
> More appropriate were the
> words of Eliot: Sometimes the cricket brings no relief and I > will show
you fear in a handfull of dust...
These Eliot lines were posted to another list I'm on. They do not exactly
parallel the events just past, but I think the lines are made more ugent by
those events:
What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal
A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
from The Waste Land
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