The Book Of The Dead Man (conversation)

Abstract

The dead man hath spoken with Matthew Arnold about ignorant armies. He hath cautioned Keats on the isolate love of beauty. If there were ever Grecian odes on the shore, they were smashed in the general onslaught. Like sand castles adrift in the idea of architecture, like bas reliefs planed to the texture of papyrus, like rubber in acid, the repositories of beauty did not outlast the idea of them. The dead man is of a mind, and a mind to, and his exploration has been in the places where an idea may fit. It has been a long thrill in the dark for the dead man and friends. The dead man is on the side of art but also on the side of artlessness. Absent the blank page, the word must forever be muddied. The words can be true only to one another, like Arnold's lovers ?the ideal. Well, says the dead man, what have we here? It seems the dead man has caught the words in a compromising position. This verbal interruptus is aquiver from circling an invisible vase where the lovers have been trying to catch one another. Must poetry forever be anticipation and delayed gratification? The dead man has been talking with T. S. Eliot about escaping one's personality, which he has.