A quick shout out to my writers group. Thanks for the help Tuesday, and thanks for coming here. You rule!
And now, because I'm in a mood caused by the fall breeze and the falling leaves, two of my favorite epigrams:
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Andrew Marvel, "To His Coy Mistress"
We live, as we dream--alone.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
These express one of my favorite (and most empowering, and sometimes depressing) things: existentialism. These epigrams are not about loneliness, but they are about alone-ness. If you're in a plane that's going down, you're going to die alone, even if you're surrounded by 200 other people. If you understand that--if you get that you're always alone, even in a crowded room, then you get all there is to know of existentialism.
One of my favorite (most memorable?) epigrams is from Contact by Carl Sagan:
ReplyDeleteLittle Fly,
Thy summer's play
My thoughtless hand
Has brush'd away.
Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?
For I dance
And drink & sing:
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.
I recognized that from William Blake right away! I'm gooooooooood! Not a bad epigram. Check out his "Little Black Boy." Good poem expressing racial equality hundreds of years before most poets.
ReplyDelete