My heart aches and a drowsy numbness pains - why must Rafael defend the creation of "Man" in Book 7 or 8 of Paradise Lost? What is there to defend? Man is a queer creature; with all his foibles and his destructive powers; he's brilliant; with all the greed that flows in his veins like the Euphrates, like a throttling, unmanning mortal disease, he remains shockingly beautiful. But there's something mischievous in his entire composition, a fact not even God can deny. But God made a complete package when he made Man. Read Keats's letter to Fanny Brawne and you'd get a glimpse into his sensuousness; or the manner by which all greed is obliterated in Shaw's plays or the strain in which love is edified by Shakespeare or divinity made beautiful by Rumi - that is also human, and something we seem to be losing - we're losing our social distinction. We're losing our love of arts, our love of nature, of feminine beauty, of an innocent child, of the beasts at our mercy, that unseen God who's so loud in all in his creation, of all that is beautiful, of our love for each other. War for land, in fact war for any reason is the death of everything that could have been delightful, so much is lost to war - that ancient tree with coils upon coils of roots concealing smells of a thousand years is blown away; that gorgeous 12 year old girl, with an olive complexion and shining eyes, and who might have been the light of someone's life; some fortunate man's bride lies dead in her pool of gore - in the words of Scott:
Love to her ear, was but a name,
Combined with vanity and shame.
So many fleeting moments of horror that we've lost faith in ourselves.
BJ
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