Page 40 - The Irony Board

Into the Body

Head in the clouds,
Feet made of clay:
What one thing shrouds
Others display.

A source of irony in examining types and contexts of human
personality is the frequent contradiction between definitions of
behavior coming from within and without the individual. As many
satirists have shown, conceits and deceits are public and private
tableaux of contrary expectations. Purely interior self-deceptions
were discussed in the previous section; public presentations and
misrepresentations of self are the topic here.
This epigram depicts a figure whose extremities are embedded,
respectively, in heaven and earth. Is the giant man or god? The
image works for both. By themselves, the idioms describing head
and feet connote disjuncture with inner and outer perceptions;
together they indicate that the giant’s mind, engaged with
otherworldly concerns, is not aware of the failure of the rest of his
body to escape physical existence. Others, however, can easily see
his imperfections, while his perfect thoughts remain hidden from
them in the altocumuli of the mind.
The ambiguous subject yields two over-all interpretations of this
piece. On a mundane level, the fallibility of man is repeatedly
revealed by his actions, despite the illusions he believes or professes:
saints are declared divine posthumously, beyond possibility of future
disgrace or memory of past indiscretion. But the perfection of a
transcendent deity is truly unassailable: the clouds shrouding its
motivation are impenetrable, and its feet haven’t touched ground in
millennia. More on theology and its equivalents appears below.

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