Henry Adams' Dualisms |
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Images
are not arguments, rarely even lead to proof, but the mind craves them, and, of late more
than ever, especially if contradictions; since the human mind has already learned to deal
in contradictions" "The Universal has no
limit. Thought "Silence alone is
respectable and respected. I believe God to be Silence" |
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| "Without the conviction
of her personal presence, men would not have been inspired; but, to us, it is rather the
inspiration of the art which proves the Virgin's presence, and we can better see the
conviction of it in the work than in the words. Every day, as the work went on, the
Virgin was present, directing the architects" "One sees her personal presence on every side. Anyone can feel it who will only consent to feel like a child. Sitting here any Sunday afternoon, while the voices of the children of the maitrise are chanting in the choir, -- your mind held in the grasp of the strong lines and shadows of the architecture; your eyes flooded with the autumn tones of the glass; your ears drowned with the purity of the voices; one sense reacting upon another until sensation reaches the limit of its range; -- you or any other lost soul, could, if you cared to look and listen, feel a sense beyond the human ready to reveal a sense divine that would make that world once more intelligible, and would bring the Virgin to life again, in all the depth of feeling which she shows here [. . .] but what is still more convincing, he could, at will, in an instant, shatter the whole art by calling into it a single motive of his own." |
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| "[T]hat the
Virgin was by essence illogical, unreasonable, and feminine, is the only fact of any
ultimate value worth studying [. . .] Why did the gentle and gracious Virgin Mother so
exasperate the Pilgrim Father? Why was the Woman struck out of the Church and
ignored in the State? These questions are not antiquarian or trifling in historical
value; they tug at the very heart-strings of all that makes whatever order is in the
cosmos. If Unity exists, in which and towards which all energies centre, it must
explain and include Duality, Diversity, Infinity -- Sex!" -- Mont Saint Michel and Chartes |
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