(no subject)
"Correction: it wasn't the procedings she took an interest in, it was the poem. I knew it already, from Miss Violence, from Avilion, but Laura hadn't bothered much about it then. Now she read it over and over.
"What was a demon-lover, she wanted to know? Why was the sea sunless, why was the ocean lifeless? Why did the sunny pleasure-dome have caves of ice? What was Mount Abora, and why was the Abyssinian maid singing about it? Why were the ancestral voices prophesying war?
"I didn't know the answers to any of these questions. I know all of them now. Not the answers of Samuel Taylor Coleridge -- I'm not sure he had any answers, since he was hopped up on drugs at the time -- but my own answers. Here they are, for what they're worth.
"The sacred river is alive. It flows to the lifeless ocean, because that's where all things that are alive end up. The lover is a demon-lover because he isn't there. The sunny pleasure-dome has caves of ice because that's what sunny pleasure-domes have -- after a while they become very cold, and after that they melt, and then where are you? All wet. Mount Abora was the Abyssinian maid's home, and she was singing about it because she couldn't get back to it. The ancestral voices were prophesying war because ancestral voices never shut up, and they hate to be wrong, and war is a sure thing, sooner or later.
"Correct me if I'm wrong."
-Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assasin
"What was a demon-lover, she wanted to know? Why was the sea sunless, why was the ocean lifeless? Why did the sunny pleasure-dome have caves of ice? What was Mount Abora, and why was the Abyssinian maid singing about it? Why were the ancestral voices prophesying war?
"I didn't know the answers to any of these questions. I know all of them now. Not the answers of Samuel Taylor Coleridge -- I'm not sure he had any answers, since he was hopped up on drugs at the time -- but my own answers. Here they are, for what they're worth.
"The sacred river is alive. It flows to the lifeless ocean, because that's where all things that are alive end up. The lover is a demon-lover because he isn't there. The sunny pleasure-dome has caves of ice because that's what sunny pleasure-domes have -- after a while they become very cold, and after that they melt, and then where are you? All wet. Mount Abora was the Abyssinian maid's home, and she was singing about it because she couldn't get back to it. The ancestral voices were prophesying war because ancestral voices never shut up, and they hate to be wrong, and war is a sure thing, sooner or later.
"Correct me if I'm wrong."
-Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assasin