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“He wasn’t a philosopher. He was young, younger than you, even, and his philosophical vocabulary was fairly primitive, but in this poem he tried to articulate the stages by which we approach fusion with the universe.
the first stage of human happiness was a ‘fellowship with essence,’ ” she said softly. I could see that A. Bettik was listening from his place at the steering pole. “By that,” she said, “Father meant an imaginative and sensuous response to nature … just the sort of feeling you were describing earlier.”
poetry and music and art as part of that response to nature,” she said. “It’s a fallible but human way of resonating to the universe—nature creates that energy of creation in us. For Father imagination and truth were the same thing. He once wrote—‘The Imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream—he awoke and found it truth.’ ”
“Does that mean that fiction is truer than … truth?” Aenea shook her head. “No, I think he meant … well, in the same poem he has a hymn to Pan— “Dread opener of the mysterious doors Leading to universal knowledge.” Aenea blew on her cup of hot tea to cool it. “To Father, Pan became a sort of symbol of imagination … especially romantic imagination.” She sipped her tea. “Did you know, Raul, that Pan was the allegorical precursor to Christ?”
“So this was your father’s idea of happiness?” Aenea tossed her head back so that her hair moved in the wind. “Oh, no,” she said. “Just the first stage of happiness on his Pleasure Thermometer. There were two higher stages.”
“But there are Richer entanglements far More self-destroying, leading, by degrees, To the chief intensity: the crown of these Is made of love and friendship, and sits high Upon the forehead of humanity.”
“Father thought that true friendship between humans was on an even higher level than our response to nature, but that the highest level attainable was love.”
there are more levels on heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in my father’s philosophy.”
Philosophical poetry by moonlight was all right, but guns that shot straight and true were a necessity.
familiarity with a weapon was easily as important as—and probably more important than—having a fancy rifle.
Part of my tired mind had been pondering theology during all this—not praying, but wondering about a Cosmic God who allowed Its creatures to torture each other like this. How many hominids, mammals, and trillions of other creatures had spent their last minutes in mortal fear such as this, their hearts pounding, their adrenaline coursing through them and exhausting them more quickly, their small minds racing in the hopeless quest of escape? How could any God describe Him- or Herself as a God of Mercy and fill the universe with fanged things such as this?
I heard the hiss and felt the blessed numbness spreading. If there is a God, I thought, it’s a painkiller.
“Entropy is a bitch,” I said. “Now, now,” said Aenea from where she was leaning on the terrace wall. “Entropy can be our friend.” “When?” I said. She turned around so that she was leaning back on her elbows. The building behind her was a dark rectangle, serving to highlight the glow of her sunburned skin. “It wears down empires,” she said. “And does in despotisms.”
“Well,” I said, “at least the Shrike’s gone. That’s a good sign.” Aenea only looked at me. But she tried to smile.
