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A FEARLESS FAITH IN FICTION — THE PASSION OF THE READING MOMENT CRYSTALLISED — Empirical literary critiques from 2008 as based on purchased books.
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Tuesday, July 03, 2012
The Two Twilights
Today's quote from THE GLASTONBURY ROMANCE by John Cowper Powys --
"The best time for any human being to pray to the First Cause if he wants his prayers to have a prosperous issue is one or other of the Two Twilights; either the twilight preceding the dawn or the twilight following the sunset. Human prayers that are offered up at noon are often intercepted by the Sun -- for all creative powers are jealous of one another -- and those that are offered up at midnight are liable to be waylaid by the Moon in her seasons or by the spirit of some thwarting planet. It is a natural fact that those Two Twilights are propitious to psychic intercourse with the First Cause while other hours are malignant and baleful."
Today's quote from THE GLASTONBURY ROMANCE by John Cowper Powys:
ReplyDelete"Not a breath of wind stirred. Not a leaf-bud quivered. Not a grass-blade swayed. There was only that elfin waterfall and, except for that, the very earth herself seemed to have fallen asleep. 'This is Norfolk," he said to himself, and in that intense, indrawn silence some old atavistic affiliation with fen-ditches and fen-water and fen-peat tugged at his soul and pulled it earthward. And then came to his nostrils, as he lay with his eyes shut, a far-flung, acrid, aromatic smell. it was not the smell of mud, or leaf-buds, or grass-roots, or cattle-droppings, or ditch-water. It was not the smell of last night's rain, or of the sleeping south wind. It reached him independent of the eel slime that still clung about the bottom of the boat. it was the smell of East Anglia itself. It was the smell to greet which, on uncounted spring mornings, his Isle-of-Ely ancestors had left their beds and opened their back doors!"