As a lover of libraries, I found the internet an infinite amount of fun, because it allows the chasing of footnotes and cross-references (previously a leisurely activity, browsing and grazing) into quite a high speed sport. Well, sometimes. Occasionally I still slow down to book speed, carrying cross-references around in my head, or on a USB, or a little white library card...
And when you start hunting specific information it becomes quite a lot trickier, assessing sources.
But still the library angels come to help (those pony-tailed people from Wings of Desire, leaning over the shoulders of the readers at the Berlin library) and in haphazard skimming I come across little gems. Don't ask me how I found this, I forget, but I have always liked Auden - a lucid poet.
The Labyrinth
Anthropos apteros for days
Walked whistling round and round the Maze,
Relying happily upon
His temperament for getting on.
The hundreth time he sighted, though,
A bush he left an hour ago,
He halted where four alleys crossed,
And recognized that he was lost.
"Where am I?" Metaphysics says
No question can be asked unless
It has an answer, so I can
Assume this maze has got a plan.
If theologians are correct,
A Plan implies an Architect:
A God-built maze would be, I'm sure,
The Universe in miniature.
Are data from the world of Sense,
In that case, valid evidence?
What in the universe I know
Can give directions how to go?
All Mathematics would suggest
A steady straight line as the best,
But left and right alternately
Is consonant with History.
Aesthetics, though, believes all Art
Intends to gratify the heart:
Rejecting disciplines like these,
Must I, then, go which way I please?
Such reasoning is only true
If we accept the classic view,
Which we have no right to assert,
According to the Introvert.
His absolute pre-supposition
Is - Man creates his own condition:
This maze was not divinely built,
But is secreted by my guilt.
The centre that I cannot find
Is known to my unconscious Mind;
I have no reason to despair
Because I am already there.
My problem is how not to will;
They move most quickly who stand still;
I'm only lost until I see
I'm lost because I want to be.
If this should fail, perhaps I should,
As certain educators would,
Content myself with the conclusion;
In theory there is no solution.
All statements about what I feel,
Like I-am-lost, are quite unreal:
My knowledge ends where it began;
A hedge is taller than a man."
Anthropos apteros, perplexed
To know which turning to take next,
Looked up and wished he were a bird
To whom such doubts must seem absurd.
WH Auden
Auden at Poetry Connection
apteros = wingless
And when you start hunting specific information it becomes quite a lot trickier, assessing sources.
But still the library angels come to help (those pony-tailed people from Wings of Desire, leaning over the shoulders of the readers at the Berlin library) and in haphazard skimming I come across little gems. Don't ask me how I found this, I forget, but I have always liked Auden - a lucid poet.
The Labyrinth
Anthropos apteros for days
Walked whistling round and round the Maze,
Relying happily upon
His temperament for getting on.
The hundreth time he sighted, though,
A bush he left an hour ago,
He halted where four alleys crossed,
And recognized that he was lost.
"Where am I?" Metaphysics says
No question can be asked unless
It has an answer, so I can
Assume this maze has got a plan.
If theologians are correct,
A Plan implies an Architect:
A God-built maze would be, I'm sure,
The Universe in miniature.
Are data from the world of Sense,
In that case, valid evidence?
What in the universe I know
Can give directions how to go?
All Mathematics would suggest
A steady straight line as the best,
But left and right alternately
Is consonant with History.
Aesthetics, though, believes all Art
Intends to gratify the heart:
Rejecting disciplines like these,
Must I, then, go which way I please?
Such reasoning is only true
If we accept the classic view,
Which we have no right to assert,
According to the Introvert.
His absolute pre-supposition
Is - Man creates his own condition:
This maze was not divinely built,
But is secreted by my guilt.
The centre that I cannot find
Is known to my unconscious Mind;
I have no reason to despair
Because I am already there.
My problem is how not to will;
They move most quickly who stand still;
I'm only lost until I see
I'm lost because I want to be.
If this should fail, perhaps I should,
As certain educators would,
Content myself with the conclusion;
In theory there is no solution.
All statements about what I feel,
Like I-am-lost, are quite unreal:
My knowledge ends where it began;
A hedge is taller than a man."
Anthropos apteros, perplexed
To know which turning to take next,
Looked up and wished he were a bird
To whom such doubts must seem absurd.
WH Auden
Auden at Poetry Connection
apteros = wingless
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