Ahh.... I knew there was a reason I loved Lord Vetinari, in addition to his addiction to insanely complex crossword puzzles.
Don't be alarmed. Ms. Pouter was delighted and is apparently now planning to nail herself to a wide variety of objects in the near future, as part of a special exhibition. Oh, Pterry, you...
Anyway, so today we covered the French poet Charles Baudelaire. He was a great fan of Edgar Allan Poe, so that explains a lot. He seems to be best classified as a horror poet, if there is such a genre as horror poetry. If there's not, I am greatly surprised. Anyway, he apprently looked for the beauty in the most unglamorous of objects, and glorified such revolting things as a decaying corpse. O.o
I mean, really. Are you serious?
To tell the truth, I got about halfway through Carrion before going, "Ugh, I can't take any more of this." I generally have a strong stomach for such things, unless it is completely pointless, excessive, or prolonged (made it through biology lab, and only felt the urge to throw up once we starting taking apart cow eyeballs in search of the retinae and once another boy managed to shove his fist down a cow aorta).
I am not at all bothered by spiders, and once when we had an infestation of rats in the barn (I live on a farm, for all you uninitiated out there) I was the one having to carry the (huge) corpses out to go throw them in the field. Sometimes there would be three or four a day. And these were RATS, not mice. Mice generally don't grow to be a foot long, y'know. The only one that made me jump I refer to as the Thanksgiving Day Horror (since it was on Thanksgiving Day, of course). I picked it up, and, to put it mildly... the bottom fell out. With lots of bonus, wriggly, pale worms. I'll leave the rest to your imagination... Pleasant dreams tonight!
Anyway, I realized that I had actually once read poetry of this sort before, and so naturally, since I love giving people nightmares apparently, I must share it.
First off, it was written by a man who lived from about 306 to 373 AD, known as St. Ephrem. He is chronologically the second Doctor of the Church; more Doctors have been added since I got my 700-page book entitled The 33 Doctors of the Church, but I most pathetically cannot remember how many and who. Hmm, sounds like I need a new book.
Oh, and a Doctor of the Church is a person- not necessarily a man!- who has been given that special distinction in recognition of their writings on theology, spirituality, etc. Let's see if I can rustle up an icon of St. Ephrem to show you all...
This is the best picture I could find that would actually LOAD, stupid thing. There's a much better one in my book, but it's black and white and I am not attempting to scan it in and then upload it to my computer and then upload it to my blog, blah, blah, blah, as it would take twenty minutes and this suffices.
Back to what I originally wanted to say! An excerpt from his poetry appears in my book, and it sounds strikingly modern in light of what we read by Baudelaire today. Here's how it goes (I doubt there are any copyright issues on writings from the 4th century):
There lie those who improved their complexions,
And artfully disguised their faces;
There lie those who painted their eyelids,
And the worm corrodes their eyes...
There lie those who were enemies,
And their bones are mingled together.
I could go into an interesting analysis of the thought process behind make-up and its ultimate futility here (I don't go in for that sort of thing, partly because I abhor stuff being on my face like that), but on second thoughts I don't think I will.
I really do go in for brutally and embarrassingly honest in this blog, don't I?
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
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