On this Monday of Holy Week, a quotation from Aldous Huxley from Gil Bailie's tape series on Dante's masterpiece, The Inferno:
“Who will ever believe or imagine that there can be torrents of peace which sweep away the dikes, which breach the levies, and shatter the sea wall? And yet this is what actually happens. God’s peace is like a river whose course is in one country and has been diverted into another by the breaking of a dike. This invading peace does things which do not seem proper to the nature of peace. For it comes with a rush, it comes with impetuosity. It comes like an element of another life, with the sound of celestial harmony and such swiftness that the soul is utterly overthrown, not because she has made any resistance to the blessing, but because of its very abundance. This abundance does no violence except to the obstacles in the way of its benediction. And all the animals that are not peaceable take flight before the onset of this peace.”
4 comments:
Ath, where and when did Huxley write that? It's a quite surprising source for such a passage.
I'd direct you to Bailie who quoted Huxley in his Inferno tape series. I tried Googling portions of it, but couldn't turn up anything myself.
Come to think of it, Gil just said "Huxley". Maybe it was Marvin, his kosher keeping and lesser known brother from Brooklyn. Or Jawan Huxley, the homeboy cousin. Or Billy Bob Huxley, the trailor part dwelling, country/western songwriter uncle.
I'd bother Bailie about it myself, but I can't do it just now in good conscience.
Indeed, I think that your Marvin, Jawan and Billy Bob hypotheses (respectively) are more in the line of probability than the Aldous inference.
Someday we'll hunt down that ref. and settle this.
According to Wikipedia, Aldous asked for (and recieved) an injection of LSD in his last hour.
That certainly would go some way toward explaining the mighty whoosh of peace. Far freaking out!
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