Autumn: Sidewalk of My Seoul
Sun-Ae and I were out walking along a street near our apartment a couple of days ago when she stopped to capture the moment. Leaves were falling as she took this photo, but they seem to have evaded the lens, perhaps embarrassed to be caught in the moment of their fall, though that would have been of little moment.
Later, I was reading something the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, had said about the "sense of absolute immersion in the richness of the moment" that somehow encompasses us at certain moments in our reading, and I thought, "How rare that is," not an experience we can strive for and attain, but something that happens to us, like falling in love, rare moments when even Faust would have uttered those fateful words, "Verweile doch, du bist so schön."
Labels: Fall, Literary Criticism, Love, Seoul
posted by Horace Jeffery Hodges @ 6:01 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Nathaniel Hawthorne has some useful things to say on this matter as it relates to "true" love and the mystique of beauty, ultimately dismissing such notions (and such moments) as not being real. Perhaps he is taking Wordsworth to the next level: rather than strong emotions recollected in tranquility, Hawthorne might take as his subject "strong emotions recollected with hypochondriac confusion punctuated with a sigh that slowly transforms to a soft smile." Thus, and with all due respect to the Archbishop, the sublime is not to be found in stasis but in that "appropriate" response which feels deeply but just as swiftly moves on.
But without that richness of the moment, we miss out on a depth we'd otherwise not even suspect is there.
Jeffery Hodges
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Oh, I completely agree.
I was in "highbrow mode" in the above.
I'll have to be more alert.
Jeffery Hodges
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