In memory of historical novelist Hilary Mantel, who reportedly
died yesterday, two images dealing with this year's Sept. 11 —
The image from Rome was suggested by yesterday's Dürer post and
by the year 1514 in the life of Thomas Cromwell, Mantel's main topic.
* I.e., for Philip Pullman, author of His Dark Materials .
Those who prefer fiction to reality may consult
a Baja-related search in this journal for "Sea of Cortez."
That search in turn suggests a Fandom webpage related
to yesterday's post "Perspective" —
https://davidmitchell.fandom.com/wiki/Luisa_Rey.
"Luisa Rey is played by Halle Berry in the Wachowski siblings'
2012 adaptation of Cloud Atlas . . . . Her name is based on
The Bridge of San Luis Rey . . . ."
See as well . . .
April 11, 2020, was the dies natalis ,
in the Catholic sense,
of John Horton Conway.
Good question. From Philip Pullman's recent HBO version of
"His Dark Materials," The University of Oxford’s St. Peter’s College:
Dialogue from Season 1, Episode 8 of "His Dark Materials" —
|
Asriel: And the serpent said, "You shall not surely die, for the Authority doth know that on that day that ye eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened, your daemons shall assume their true form and ye shall be as…" Both: "… gods, knowing good and…" Lyra: "… evil." Asriel: "… Dust ." You see? They have been trying to convince us for centuries that we are born guilty. And that we have to spend a lifetime atoning for the crime of eating an apple. Is there any proof for this heinous stain, this shame, this guilt? No, not at all. We are to take it on faith, and on the word of the Authority. But Dust… Dust is an elementary particle that we can record, measure, study.
Read more at: |
Related material: Times Square Logic. Log24 posts now tagged
"Times Square Logic" include two from April 7, 2015, the date of
Geoffrey Lewis's death.
Lewis played, notably, "Hard Case Williams" in Lust in the Dust (1984).
The Axiomatic Method:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident…."
Other methods:
"In Gauss we trust." (See below.)
But perhaps not so much in Princeton . . .
"Dust is a fictional elementary particle that is of
fundamental importance within the story."
— Wikipedia on Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy
A review of posts tagged Kabbalah yields —
|
"If all that 'matters' are fundamentally mathematical relationships, then there ceases to be any important difference between the actual and the possible. (Even if you aren't a mathematical Platonist, you can always find some collection of particles of dust to fit any required pattern. In Permutation City this is called the 'logic of the dust' theory.)….
— Danny Yee, review of Permutation City , |
See also in this journal a search for Dark Matter.
A literary complaint:
Philip Larkin on his fear of death—
This is a special way
of being afraid
No trick dispels.
Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten
musical brocade
Created to pretend
we never die….
A literary response
quoted in The Last Enemy:
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:
— Introibo ad altare Dei.
Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up coarsely:
— Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!
Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding country and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.
Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the bowl smartly.
— Back to barracks! he said sternly.
He added in a preacher’s tone:
— For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all.
He peered sideways up and gave a long low whistle of call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answered through the calm.
— Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the current, will you?
— James Joyce, Ulysses
From a musical brocade:
“My shavin’ razor’s cold
and it stings.”— John Stewart,
who died on January 19For the rest of
the brocade, see
The Last Enemy.
Related material:
The Crimson Passion:
A Drama at Mardi Grasand the quote by Susan Sontag
in yesterday’s entry,
as well as a recent
New York Times book review:
“Slow music, please.
Shut your eyes, gents.
One moment. A little trouble
about those white corpuscles.
Silence, all.”Ite, missa est.
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