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“A thing of beauty is a joy forever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness …”
“I have often been called insane by those who underestimate the power of poetry.
“I mean hero as in he whose prowess and beneficence is so legendary that he comes to be honored as a divinity. I mean hero in the literary sense, as in central protagonist given to forceful action. I mean hero as in he whose tragic flaws will be his undoing.” The poet paused and looked expectantly at me, but I stared back in silence. “No tragic flaws?” he said at last. “Or not given to forceful action?”
“To folly,” he said. “To divine madness. To insane quests and messiahs crying from the desert. To the death of tyrants. To confusion to our enemies.” I started to raise the glass to my lips, but the old man was not done. “To heroes,” he said. “To heroes who get their hair cut.” He drank the champagne in one gulp.
And he oppressed. Yet he shall not die, These things accomplished. If he utterly Scans all depths of magic, and expounds The meanings of all motions, shapes and sounds; If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
So many important things pass quickly without being understood at the time. So many powerful moments are buried beneath the absurd.
Suddenly the void collapsed in on itself, vision returned, and the spheres of red and blue returned fore and aft. Within seconds the blue sphere from the stern migrated along the ship like a doughnut passing over a writing stylus, it merged with the red sphere at the bow, and colored geometries burst without warning from the forward sphere like flying creatures emerging from an egg. I say “colored geometries,” but this does nothing to share the complex reality: fractal-generated shapes pulsed and coiled and twisted through what had been the void. Spiral forms, spiked with their own
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“Maybe we should go inside,” I said, hearing each word in my own voice hanging separately in the air like icicles along a branch.
“These books are doubly interesting as artifacts,” said the android, “since they came from an age when all information was instantly available to anyone.”
“Born,” said Aenea. “Right. What kind of conversation could a poet’s persona have with a fetus? But we talked. His persona was still connected to the TechnoCore. He showed me … well, it’s complicated, Raul. Believe me.”
Information is always to be treasured, Raul. It is behind only love and honesty in a person’s attempt to understand the universe.
I felt as if I should make some comment, say something intelligent. “Yoicks,” I said.
“Jesus wept,” I said, turning to A. Bettik. “I wonder if anyone’s ever weighed this bastard before.”
“Father included 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.’ ”
“I’m not quite sure I get that,” I said. “Does that mean that fiction is truer than … truth?”
“Not exactly,” said the girl. “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.” I nodded. “Like the Church teaches,” I said. “The love of Christ … the love of our fellow humans.” “Uh-uh,” said Aenea, sipping the last of her tea. “Father meant erotic love. Sex.”
Aenea looked at me. The moonlight made her large eyes luminous. “I think there are more levels on heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in my father’s philosophy.” “I see,” I said, thinking, Who the hell is Horatio?
“My father was very young when he wrote that,” said Aenea. “It was his first poem and it was a flop. What he wanted—what he wanted his shepherd hero to learn—was how exalted these things could be—poetry, nature, wisdom, the voices of friends, brave deeds, the glory of strange places, the charm of the opposite sex. But he stopped before he got to the real essence.”
“The meanings of all motions, shapes, and sounds,” whispered the girl. “… all forms and substances/Straight homeward to their symbol-essences …”
Christ being taken off the cross, one of his disciple’s arms under his limp arms, his bare and mutilated feet being held by the Virgin. Don’t flatter yourself, came the unbidden thought through my mental fog. It spoke in Aenea’s voice.
When A. Bettik went to shake the old priest’s hand, Father Glaucus fiercely hugged the startled android. “Your day is yet to come, my friend M. Bettik. I feel this. I feel this strongly.”
Cuchiat and Chatchia removed membrane masks from the pack. The other Chitchatuk had already donned theirs. These were obviously created-things—the mask itself was made of the same inner skin as the pressure suit, with wraith-hide padding sewn in here and there. The eyepieces were made from the outer lense of the wraith-eyes, offering the same limited access to the infrared as our outer-robe eyes. From the snout of the mask ran a length of coiled wraith-intestine, the end of which Cuchiat carefully sewed into one of their water bags.
The Chitchatuk version of a Fremen stillsuit. ☺️
The translation literally tears de Soya apart within the confines of his couch. He dies grinning fiercely.
“Jesus wept,” I said softly.
I read this, as you do, with hope for my sanity and hope for salvation, not of my soul, but salvation of self in the renewed certainty of reunion—real reunion, physical reunion—with the one whom I remember and love above all others. And this is the best reason to read.
Life is brutal that way … the loss of irrecoverable moments amid trivia and distraction.
A thing of beauty is a joy forever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
