—Rainbow— The Darkness and the Light A rainbow at its rootIs black as sootImpalpable and muteAs from a lofty butteDay from darkness softly breaksWith myriad colors iridescent as fruit. A rainbow’s two vectors end not at the groundBut curve darkly down and underground,Then up to form a dipolar halo—O! so round. and know that O est toujours… Continue reading Rainbow
Month: August 2023
The Giggles
A Fay-fay-fable-ing by Bā-Bē-bi-bo-bu The day The Giggles came abruptly into townThere was evermore little sadness, hardly a frown,Trailing seismic laughtershocks in their wake,Causing Earth herself to cachinnate and quake,Bringing wonder so awash with wassail and weal,Church bells in steeples would thunder and peal.They come trailing clouds of glorious intimationsMurmurations that wiggle ears and soft… Continue reading The Giggles
Beauty from the Mists of Chinese Antiquity
Around 1200 BCE, during the Shang Dynasty in ancient China, there arose a form of religious divination, a way of looking into the future, that is known as Oracle Bone Inscription. Various kinds of bone were used, among them the shoulder blades of oxen, but the bone of choice was the plastron, the flat ventral… Continue reading Beauty from the Mists of Chinese Antiquity
The Gospel of John: Hidden Beauty Speaking from the Depths
About three years ago, as one of my HyC Presentations, I sent out an essay that describes the complex and beautiful structure of John’s Gospel, a structure based on the rhetorical figure known as chiasmus. The title of the essay is: The Gospel of John: A Miracle of Composition and I will soon be posting… Continue reading The Gospel of John: Hidden Beauty Speaking from the Depths
WHIRLIGIG
O Oeaud’eau-delal’homme avec catarrhequi gratte la guitare sneezesand evens the score with stevensabiding in stone—a lassie—one of yourmona lisas, that old floozy who embracedbrancusi a chap with no salary now framed inthe gallery wheezes: gutturals basso profundo chezpicasso the blind mole featly quilled ere a playerfluffed that line of peri-cles’s undermines thefresco engineered by ionesco… Continue reading WHIRLIGIG
Meeting with Father Teilhard de Chardin
[Teilhard interviewed by Marcel Brion] Les Nouvelles Littéraires, Thursday, January 11, 1951, pages 1 and 4 What follows is a translation of Marcel Brion’s interview with Teilhard de Chardin preceded by some notes on the historical context of the interview. The Context of Teilhard’s Interview with Marcel Brion In a letter dated January 28, 1951,… Continue reading Meeting with Father Teilhard de Chardin
John’s Prologue in Quaternary Form
We have mentioned the chiastic form which has been discovered in John’s prologue.There has been increasing agreement that the center of this chiastic form is in v. 12 or 12+13. Gerhard and Ellis find in the prologue the same five-part chiastic structure which they have found throughout the gospel. We shall use their proposed structure… Continue reading John’s Prologue in Quaternary Form