Fw: AtDtDA(34):

[kelber at mindspring.com]

One more point about darkness and light.  TRP seems to have a positive attitude towards darkness in the Cyprian-becomes-a-nun section.  We know at least one thing that is born of the light -- phosgene -- is destructive, whereas night, darkness is a "first principle" linked with creation.

But on p. 964 we get:

"As the landscape turned increasingly chaotic and murderous, the streams of refugees swelled.  Another headlong fearful escape of the kind that in collective dreams, in legends, would be misremembered and reimagined into pilgrimage or crusade ... the dark terror behind transmuted to a bright hope ahead, the bright hope becoming a popular, perhaps someday a national, delusion.  Embedded invisibly in it would remain the ancient darkness, too awful to face, thriving, emerging in disguise, vigorous, evil, destructive, inextricable."

A very different take on darkness as evil and destructive.  But it still seems to link darkness to ancient religion, with light linked to the delusions of more modern or organized religion.  Still kind of a swipe at "light," I guess.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>

>"So the darkness becomes the light, and the stillness the dancing"---"East Coker",T.S.
>Eliot. 
>
>--- On Wed, 7/2/08, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
>

>"the Greeks called her Νυξ"
>
>NYX was the goddess of the night, one of the ancient Protogenoi
>(first-born elemental gods)....
>
>http://www.theoi.com/Protogenos/Nyx.html
>
>The fragments of Orphic cosmogonies given by Eudemos, and Plato, and
>Lydus do not quite agree, but at least Night, Oceanus, and Thetys are
>elementary beings, and the first of them in order of existence was
>probably Night....
>
>http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04405c.htm
>
>In Greek mythology, Nyx (Νύξ, Nox in Roman translation) was the
>primordial goddess of the night. A shadowy figure, Night stood at or
>near the beginning of creation, and was the mother of personified gods
>such as Sleep and Death. Her appearances in mythology are sparse, but
>reveal her as a figure of exceptional power....
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyx_(mythology)
>
>Night took on an even more important role in several fragmentary poems
>attributed to Orpheus. In them, Night, rather than Chaos, is the first
>principle. Night occupies a cave or adyton, in which she gives
>oracles. Kronos - who is chained within, asleep and drunk on honey -
>dreams and prophesies. Outside the cave, Adrastea clashes cymbals and
>beats upon her tympanon, moving the entire universe in an ecstatic
>dance to the rhythm of Nyx's chanting. Phanes - the strange,
>monstrous, hermaphrodite Orphic demiurge - was the child or father of
>Nyx.
>
>Night is also the first principle in the opening chorus of
>Aristophanes's Birds, which may be Orphic in inspiration....
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyx_(mythology)#Other_Greek_texts
>
>http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/William-Adolphe_Bouguereau_%281825-1905%29_-_La_Nuit_%281883%29.jpg
>