31.1.07

To Tempt You Into Reading.

The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light, just as a candle flame looks beautiful in the light of morning. Light within light. It seems like a metaphor for something. So much does. Ralph Waldo Emerson is excellent on this point.
It seems to me to be a metaphor for the human soul, the singular light within the great general light of existence. Or it seems like poetry within language. Perhaps wisdom within experience. Or marriage within friendship and love. I'll try to remember to use this. I believe I see a place for it in my thoughts on Hagar and Ishmael. Their time in the wilderness seems like a specific moment of divine Providence within the whole providential regime of Creation.

-p.119, Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson

4 comments:

Josh said...

hmmm...

emelina said...

yay for hot modern literature! i am taking the sweetest class ever...

i highly recommend The Sportswriter, by Richard Ford. and i'm only 100 pages into it. it reflects longing, yet is surprisingly satisfying, realistic about life and death, yet hopeful.

have you read Cynthia Ozick or Louise Erdrich? this week i'm starting to think about my senior thesis and grad schools. kind of scary, but exciting.

if i were rich, i would buy you an autographed collection of Robert Frost.

Court said...

enjoyable

Katie said...

Oh I love that book