Divine GR

[Monte Davis]

You've given me a lot! so mull these, too:

"She could, at this stage of things, recognize signals like
that, as the epileptic is said to an odor, color, pure piercing
grace note announcing his seizure. Afterward it is only this
signal, really dross, this secular announcement, and never
what is revealed during the attack, that he remembers.
Oedipa wondered whether, at the end of this (if it were
supposed to end), she too might not be left with only compiled
memories of clues, announcements, intimations, but never
the central truth itself, which must somehow each time be too
bright for her memory to hold; which must always blaze out,
destroying its own message irreversibly, leaving an
overexposed blank when the ordinary world came back."

"From that moment my vision was greater than our speech, 
which fails at such a sight, and memory too fails at such excess. 
Like him that sees in a dream, and after the dream the passion 
wrought by it remains and the rest returns not to his mind, such 
am I, for my vision almost wholly fades..." (Paradiso XXXIII, Sinclair)

Now, I suppose we could ignore "grace note" and "secular 
annnouncement," which practically elbow us in the ribs, and the 
"epileptic Word" I cited before, and argue coincidence: there are 
only so many metaphors for transcendent, blinding visions.

But it's hard to ignore:

"They would not be who or where They are without a touch of Dante to Their
notions of reprisal. Simple talion may be fine for wartime, but politics
between wars demands symmetry and a more elegant idea of justice, even to
the point of masquerading, a bit decadently, as mercy." (GR 350)

BTW, I think there's more black comedy in Inferno than just Malebranche -- 
but some of it is so harsh that we tender moderns tend to wince, instead 
of falling down with them Guelph 'n Ghibelline Giggles...

-Monte