What I had read was the words Siegfried and the Twilight of the Gods.What I had seen was one of Arthur Rackham's illustrations to thatvolume. I had never heard of Wagner, nor of Siegfried. I thought theTwilight of the Gods meant the twilight in which the gods lived. How didI know, at once and beyond question, that this was no Celtic, or silvan,or terrestrial twilight? But so it was. Pure "Northernness" engulfed me:a vision of huge, clear spaces hanging above the Atlantic in the endlesstwilight of Northern summer, remoteness, severity... and almost atthe same moment I knew that I had met this before, long, long ago (ithardly seems longer now) in Tegner's Drapa, that Siegfried (whateverit might be) belonged to the same world as Balder and thesunward-sailing cranes. And with that plunge back into my own past therearose at once, almost like heartbreak, the memory of Joy itself, theknowledge that I had once had what I had now lacked for years, that Iwas returning at last from exile and desert lands to my own country; andthe distance of the Twilight of the Gods and the distance of my own pastJoy, both unattainable, flowed together into a single, unendurable senseof desire and loss, which suddenly became one with the loss of the wholeexperience, which, as I now stared round that dusty schoolroom like aman recovering from unconsciousness, had already vanished, had eluded meat the very moment when I could first say It is. And at once I knew(with fatal knowledge) that to "have it again" was the supreme and onlyimportant object of desire.
Mythology's Last Gods Dr Harwood Pdf Download
A few chapters ago I warned the reader that the return of Joy hadintroduced into my life a duality which makes it difficult to narrate.Reading through what I have just written about Wyvern, I find myselfexclaiming, "Lies, lies! This was really a period of ecstasy. Itconsisted chiefly of moments when you were too happy to speak, when thegods and heroes rioted through your head, when satyrs danced and Maenadsroared on the mountains, when Brynhild and Sieglinde, Deirdre, Maeve andHelen were all about you, till sometimes you felt that it might breakyou with mere richness." And all that is true. There were moreLeprechauns than fags in that House. I have seen the victories ofCuchulain more often than those of the first eleven. Was Borage the Headof the Coll? or was it Conachar MacNessa? And the world itself--can Ihave been unhappy, living in Paradise? What keen, tingling sunlightthere was! The mere smells were enough to make a man tipsy--cut grass,dew-dabbled mosses, sweet pea, autumn woods, wood burning, peat, saltwater. The sense ached. I was sick with desire; that sickness betterthan health. All this is true, but it does not make the other version alie. I am telling a story of two lives. They have nothing to do witheach other: oil and vinegar, a river running beside a canal, Jekyll andHyde. Fix your eye on either and it claims to be the sole truth. When Iremember my outer life I see clearly that the other is but momentaryflashes, seconds of gold scattered in months of dross, each instantlyswallowed up in the old, familiar, sordid, hopeless weariness. When Iremember my inner life I see that everything mentioned in the last twochapters was merely a coarse curtain which at any moment might be drawnaside to reveal all the heavens I then knew. The same duality perplexesthe story of my home life, to which I must now turn.
My conversion involved as yet no belief in a future life. I now numberit among my greatest mercies that I was permitted for several months,perhaps for a year, to know God and to attempt obedience without evenraising that question. My training was like that of the Jews, to whom Herevealed Himself centuries before there was a whisper of anything better(or worse) beyond the grave than shadowy and featureless Sheol. And Idid not dream even of that. There are men, far better men than I, whohave made immortality almost the central doctrine of their religion; butfor my own part I have never seen how a preoccupation with that subjectat the outset could fail to corrupt the whole thing. I had been broughtup to believe that goodness was goodness only if it were disinterested,and that any hope of reward or fear of punishment contaminated the will.If I was wrong in this (the question is really much more complicatedthan I then perceived) my error was most tenderly allowed for. I wasafraid that threats or promises would demoralise me; no threats orpromises were made. The commands were inexorable, but they were backedby no "sanctions". God was to be obeyed simply because he was God. Longsince, through the gods of Asgard, and later through the notion of theAbsolute, He had taught me how a thing can be revered not for what itcan do to us but for what it is in itself. That is why, though it was aterror, it was no surprise to learn that God is to be obeyed because ofwhat He is in Himself. If you ask why we should obey God, in the lastresort the answer is, "I am." To know God is to know that our obedienceis due to Him. In His nature His sovereignty de jure is revealed. 2ff7e9595c
Comments