by beatriceotto | Apr 16, 2019 | triologisms
A charming way to convey the genesis of ideas or desires, likening them to the urge of bees to make honey. They are already buzzing about our garden, prodding nooks and crannies for suitable nests. ‘It follows that the human intellect Can’t have the...
by beatriceotto | Apr 16, 2019 | triologisms
Clearly, sitting on the fence, hedging your bets, watching which way the wind blows, is a sin which leads to hell and a suitably inverted punishment. For having never run in one direction or another in your life (‘never-living sprinters’), you are...
by beatriceotto | Apr 16, 2019 | triologisms
A surprising one, this, as sin is often presented, nowadays, as socially acceptable, even desirable ‘vice’ – something naughty-but-nice, essentially pleasurable and barely tainted by guilt (or is guilt the only sin left?) Dante suggests instead that...
by beatriceotto | Feb 26, 2019 | triologisms
The dancing dust of a sunbeam also glimmering as a mirror hall for fireflies. What a bright image. ‘A light-stream interplay, a mirror hallFor fireflies…’ (Book III, Canto 22) Source: Dante, The Divine Comedy, trans. Clive James (New York:...
by beatriceotto | Feb 26, 2019 | triologisms
Three simple words perhaps summing up the pinnacle of much spiritual seeking, especially if once reached, it spills over with positive energy. Or call it love, Dante did, and George Herbert would have. ‘So sweetly the well-ordered spirit swellsWith...
by beatriceotto | Feb 26, 2019 | triologisms
At the precocious signal of spring, I see new-grown green peeping all about. And isn’t that a sweet scene, sitting on a tree root surrounded with ‘just’ the seven virtues. So understated, so immense. ‘Look there beneath that new-grown...
by beatriceotto | Feb 19, 2019 | triologisms
Flay has spent his whole life – a long one – in the stiflingly familiar circuits and rituals of serving the Earl of Gormenghast, barely leaving the sprawling, mossy, solid walls of the castle. It is his home and as near as he has to a family, even with the...
by beatriceotto | Feb 19, 2019 | triologisms
Swelter, the button-popping portly chef and Flay, the all purpose butler, valet and loyal servant of the Earl of Gormenghast, circle in for the kill in their mortal combat. No spoilers here, read the book! ‘… so intense was their hatred … (they)...
by beatriceotto | Feb 19, 2019 | triologisms
Flay and Swelter, pitched in a life and death struggle, are at physically opposite extremes – Flay, wiry, knobbly, skinny, and Swelter, the all-tasting chef, round as a demijohn. Their battle is desperate and all out. ‘… he brings his sharp,...
