Anti-Climacus

QUOTE FOR THE EVENING: We've been a lght on substantive posting, as our writing energies have been devoted to finalizing our prospectus, but that has now been sent to the whole committee. We'll see what happens Thursday. Anyway, on to the quote-y goodness:

"And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of things ill done and done to others' harm
Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.
From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit
Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire
Where you must move in measure, like a dancer."

Eliot's interlocutor gives this as the last of three 'gifts reserved for age' that 'set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.' I am tempted to find this terribly depressing: a lifetime of experience will allow me to see how constantly I have failed, how much I have perverted in the name of cultivating virtue? But the hope, I suppose, comes in the possibility of the refining fire.

(There is a longer post brewing on my initial attraction to Eliot as a poet and intellectual figure, which will make use of the Poussin painting Et in Arcadia ego, but that will have to wait another day or two. This is all prompted by a conversation I had with a couple of friends over lunch, in which I was asked what I found appealing about good ol' T.S.)