Lika_k’s Reviews > Pope Joan > Status Update

The moral kingdom, if you will forgive the expression, also has its proper mythology, such as heroic devotions, saintly ecstasies, superhuman self-sacrifices, inseparable friendships and other such tragic or romantic material. Among these chimera of past ages it is proper to place love, I think, as troubadours of the Middle Ages and the misinterpreters of Plato understood it - though according to true philosophy love

The poets picture for us, in mythical countries and ages, the strange and hideous products of the vegetable or animal kingdoms: mellifluous lotuses, singing trees, winged dragons goat-footed satyrs, hydras, giants, sirens, heroes magi, prophets, martyrs, saints and other phenomena which none of us have ever seen save in dreams or paintings.

Today when writing to a woman we borrow from Foscolo and Sand, but the early poets copied from the Psalms and the prophets so that their letters were always burning like the lips of Sulamites and the sands of the desert.