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Thursday, December 25, 2014

amor veritas vincit omnia | (shibboleth, move along...)


amor veritas vincit omnia, or, from Almost Nobody to Just Somebody* 




*um, this is an in joke: a respected peer spoke disparagingly of his published efforts, with respect to the (as he sees it) limited scope of audience with whom he has communicated thereby.

to  which, should any desire, instead of the above anonomotopoesia, a more semiotically familiar response, the best you will get this fine Christmas eve is my willingness to let Mr. J. Milton from Cheapside respond with a snippet of his moft excellently good Paradise Lost -- as retold by one Chris Swann, because I feel like it.  

At a significant moment in Paradise Lost (actually … I struggle to think of any moments in that poem that aren’t significant), John Milton calls upon his ‘Muse’, Urania — code for the Holy Spirit — and expresses his hopes about the hearing his epic poem will receive (Book VII.30-31):

                          Still govern thou my song
Urania! and fit audience find, though few.

Clearly, Milton’s not all that optimistic about the number of people who will qualify as an audience ‘fit’ to hear — and respond rightly to — the story he’s telling.


-- of course i would say as much -- nobody at all reads this blog, and 'nobody at all' is a smaller audience than 'almost nobody.'

be seeing you. 

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