DOI Artikel:
Raleigh, Walter Alexander: Poet and historian: a dialogue
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27811#0365
By Walter Raleigh 363
may discard figure, religion never can ; if it does, it is rapidly
becoming philosophy, it will no longer move men. And a very
comic figure it cuts during the transition. One shoe off and one
shoe on, like my son John of the legend. It is as great an offence
in these cases to take off the second shoe as it is not to take off
the first. But in the end you must go one way or the other, you
must either think or see.
FFzY. I prefer to think. You will allow me, I hope, a certain
low place in the rank of writers ?
FY?. Have you read the pseudo-Dionysius on the Celestial
Hierarchy ? There are nine orders of angels ; with the highest,
the Seraphim, knowledge springs from love ; with the second
order, the Cherubim, love springs from knowledge. If writers were
arranged in like manner, I am afraid you would have to be content
with being a cherub. But be easy, there are seven orders below you.
FAY. And who is above me ?
Accept my apologies, I am.
FAY. Because you do not speak without a parable ?
Because everything I say has a meaning ; I do not cata-
logue the non-existent. Nothing in the world is of import save
as it is interpreted and new-created by passion and thought, and
lofty thought and intense feeling will see more in the facts than
the facts themselves. So Plato saw in a shadow on the wall an
explanation of the appearances of life. So Shakespeare saw in the
spring and the autumn the symbols of the beauty and the bounty
of his friend. Astrology, they tell me, is dead, but in the song
of Deborah the stars in their courses still hght against Sisera.
Wherever profound truth is to be expressed you must have
recourse to figure. You men of fact assail the truth too bluntly,
she is not to be won so ; when you can say all that you mean
directly, be assured it is perfectly trivial.
H;Y.
may discard figure, religion never can ; if it does, it is rapidly
becoming philosophy, it will no longer move men. And a very
comic figure it cuts during the transition. One shoe off and one
shoe on, like my son John of the legend. It is as great an offence
in these cases to take off the second shoe as it is not to take off
the first. But in the end you must go one way or the other, you
must either think or see.
FFzY. I prefer to think. You will allow me, I hope, a certain
low place in the rank of writers ?
FY?. Have you read the pseudo-Dionysius on the Celestial
Hierarchy ? There are nine orders of angels ; with the highest,
the Seraphim, knowledge springs from love ; with the second
order, the Cherubim, love springs from knowledge. If writers were
arranged in like manner, I am afraid you would have to be content
with being a cherub. But be easy, there are seven orders below you.
FAY. And who is above me ?
Accept my apologies, I am.
FAY. Because you do not speak without a parable ?
Because everything I say has a meaning ; I do not cata-
logue the non-existent. Nothing in the world is of import save
as it is interpreted and new-created by passion and thought, and
lofty thought and intense feeling will see more in the facts than
the facts themselves. So Plato saw in a shadow on the wall an
explanation of the appearances of life. So Shakespeare saw in the
spring and the autumn the symbols of the beauty and the bounty
of his friend. Astrology, they tell me, is dead, but in the song
of Deborah the stars in their courses still hght against Sisera.
Wherever profound truth is to be expressed you must have
recourse to figure. You men of fact assail the truth too bluntly,
she is not to be won so ; when you can say all that you mean
directly, be assured it is perfectly trivial.
H;Y.