Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Two departures

These pieces I read in the last 24 hours seem to belong together
Assez vu. La vision s'est rencontrée à tous les airs.
Assez eu. Rumeurs des villes, le soir, et au soleil, et toujours.
Assez connu. Les arrêts de la vie. — Ô Rumeurs et Visions!
Départ dans l'affection et le bruit neufs!
- Rimbaud with a translation here
And this from Baldwin's Go tell it on the mountain
The sun had come full awake. It was waking the streets, and houses, and crying at the windows. It fell over Elisha like a golden robe, and struck John's forehead, where Elisha had kissed him, like a seal ineffaceable for ever.
A wonderful book in its Biblical imagery and a struggle for spiritual identity.
Wikipedia says
Baldwin makes several references to the Holy Bible in Go Tell it on the Mountain
- several?!?! - the book is drenched in Biblical imagery! Various reviews claim a not so hidden gay subtext - for example Douglas Field in the Guardian but I enjoyed it as a depiction of black Pentecostalism, the struggle against poverty and difficult moral choices. Read as an interesting contrast to our book club of last month - To Kill a Mockingbird with its interesting black church scene.

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