Rilke, Lot49, GR connections

[JL]

brian rogers [snipped]:

>"               am I not right
>to feel as if I must stay seated, must
>wait before the puppet stage, or, rather,
>gaze at it so intensely that at last,
>to balance my gaze, an angel has come and
>make the stuffed skins startle into life.
>Angel and puppet: a real play, finally."        -Rilke
>
>"...in a world in which fate and even God himself have become famous above
>all because they answer us with silence...the doll was the first to
>inflict on us that tremendous silence (larger than life) which later kept
>breathing on us out of space, whenever we came to the limits of our
>existence. It was facing the doll, as it stared at us, that we experienced
>for the first time (or am I mistaken?) that emptiness of feeling, that
>heartpause, in which we could have vanished..." - Rilke

>>thoughts? contradictions?

only to point out the _V._ connection as well (from p320) :

  We knew they were only puppets
  And the music from a gramophone:
  Knew the gathered silk would fade,
  Ball-fringe fray.
  Plush contract the mange;
  Knew, or suspected, that children do grow up;
  Would begin to shuffle after the first hundred years
  Of the performance; yawn towards afternoon,
  Begin to see the peeling paint on Judy's cheek,
  Detect implausibility in the palsied stick
  And self-deception in the villain's laugh.
  But dear Christ, whose slim jewelled hand was it
  Flicked from the wings so unexpected,
  Holding the lighted wax taper
  To send up all our poor precious tinder
  In flame of terrible colours?
  Who was she who gently laughed, "Good night,"
  Among the hoarse screaming of aged children?

JL
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Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting.  
It was quite simple.  All that was needed was an unending 
series of victories over your own memory.   
                                     [ _nineteen eighty-four_ ]
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