But only apparently. Not in point of fact.

As TWL proclaims,

Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water.

Chokh Raj <[log in to unmask]> wrote Friday, February 8, 2013 9:09 PM:

apparently, existence precedes essence

http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/search/picasso/15

Chokh Raj <[log in to unmask]> wrote Friday, February 8, 2013 7:39 PM:

And here is Gerontion vis-a-vis the same crisis:

. . . What will the spider do,
Suspend its operations, will the weevil
Delay? De Bailhache, Fresca, Mrs. Cammel, whirled
Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear
In fractured atoms. Gull against the wind, in the windy straits
Of Belle Isle, or running on the Horn,
White feathers in the snow, the Gulf claims,
And an old man driven by the Trades
To a sleepy corner.

                    Tenants of the house,
Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.

---

CR

P <[log in to unmask]> wrote Fri, Feb 8, 2013 10:19:16 PM:

"On Margate sands I can...."
P. M.

Chokh Raj <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

the existential dilemma in 'The Family Reunion' (cf. 'Sweeney Agonistes')

At the beginning, eight years ago,

I felt, at first, that sense of separation,

Of isolation unredeemable, irrevocable --

It's eternal, or gives a knowledge of eternity,

Because it feels eternal while it lasts. That is one hell.

Then the numbness came to cover it -- that is another --

That was the second hell of not being there,

The degradation of being parted from my self,

From the self which persisted only as an eye, seeing.

All this last year, I could not fit myself together:

When I was inside the old dream, I felt all the same emotion

Or lack of emotion, as before: the same loathing

Diffused, I not a person, in a world not of persons

But only of contaminating presences.

And then I had no horror of my action,

I only felt the repetition of it

Over and over. When I was outside,

I could associate nothing of it with myself.

Though nothing else was real. I thought foolishly

That when I got back to Wishwood, as I had left it,

Everything would fall into place. But they prevent it.

I still have to find out what their meaning is.

Here I have been finding

A misery long forgotten, and a new torture,

The shadow of something behind our meagre childhood,

Some origin of wretchedness. Is that what they would show me?

---

in the thick of it

P <[log in to unmask]> wrote Wednesday, February 6, 2013 9:50 PM:

It's the same crisis as in TWL.
Different context.
P. M.

Chokh Raj <[log in to unmask]> wrote

Re: TS Eliot vis-a-vis the existential crisis

"a lifetime burning in every moment"

"Hell is oneself;

Hell is alone, the other figures in it

Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from

And nothing to escape to. One is always alone."