Page 18 - GALIET EMBERS & SAPPHIRE: Milton IV
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vision of the other, nor Dante’s vision of Beatrice that enlaces, at first, his heart, but the dulcet, melodious hearing of the divine call: O sweetest Apollo in feminine form! She, symmetry and geometry 3⁄4 pure lyre, and Muse no more of his oblivion, Lethe, but of Aletheia, of truth, of verb, of sacred word and place, reminding him of his other, so that she, as his Queen, may complete his exiled22 being: being as home-dwelling, as in- feeling the immanent divine.23 Home-being in melodious song, song that is myth and myth song; oracular she-song, turning piping ecstasy into lyric fantasy, remembering the missing, mysterious notes of beauty’s Beauty, not as fugue, but lute; as the ever present in what clearing poetry pouring.
A poesy that enchants, captivates, sublimates. One of symmetries, of harmonies, Pythagorean ones, to Echo of the forest sung, whispering, yearning for her own clearing.24 In this inversion, mysterious and paradoxical, where Beauty’s Form or Lady Virtue appeals to myth 3⁄4 to Echo 3⁄4 to reveal her place and her brothers’ whereabouts, is to appeal, not to difference, contrast, but to repetition, to mimesis. In Echo, there is neither becoming, nor individuality nor identity, only mimetic being. To her belongs the last word: echo and repetition. Her twice
22 That is, a Comus exiled from the Apollonian.
23 Heidegger. Poetry, Language and Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper Collins, 2001. 25
24 Elder brother argues that lust and carnal sensuality, lewd and sinful, along with its foul speech, once allowed to defile, it clots one’s soul and makes it impure. Thus, it loses its divine properties. 460-470.
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