common threads
From the two books I'm currently reading, a surprising echo of imagery:
No millenium seems likely to descend upon humanity; no better and stronger League of Nations will be instituted; no form of Christianity and no alternative to Christianity will bring peace to the world or integrity to the individual; no 'change of heart' will occur. And yet we need not despair, indeed, we cannot despair; the evidence of history shows us that men have always insisted behaving creatively under the shadow of the sword; that they have done their artistic and scientific and domestic stuff for the sake of doing it and that we had better follow their example under the shadow of the aeroplanes.
- 'What I Believe' by E.M. Forster (1939)
How well would he, Uncle Khaled, the 'great poet', as Baba called him, write under Shahryar's sword? What would come out? Could he make music, could he sing? Scheherezade did, night after night, unable to look up into a sky or rest in the silence and solitude of her own garden, hearing a wicker chair creak with the comfort of her own weight. She, I am certain now, was one of the bravest people that had ever lived. It's one thing not to fear death, another to sing under its sword.
- 'In The Country of Men' by Hisham Matar (2006)
No millenium seems likely to descend upon humanity; no better and stronger League of Nations will be instituted; no form of Christianity and no alternative to Christianity will bring peace to the world or integrity to the individual; no 'change of heart' will occur. And yet we need not despair, indeed, we cannot despair; the evidence of history shows us that men have always insisted behaving creatively under the shadow of the sword; that they have done their artistic and scientific and domestic stuff for the sake of doing it and that we had better follow their example under the shadow of the aeroplanes.
- 'What I Believe' by E.M. Forster (1939)
How well would he, Uncle Khaled, the 'great poet', as Baba called him, write under Shahryar's sword? What would come out? Could he make music, could he sing? Scheherezade did, night after night, unable to look up into a sky or rest in the silence and solitude of her own garden, hearing a wicker chair creak with the comfort of her own weight. She, I am certain now, was one of the bravest people that had ever lived. It's one thing not to fear death, another to sing under its sword.
- 'In The Country of Men' by Hisham Matar (2006)