On Mar 10, 2013, at 12:51 PM, Michael Smith wrote:
As the poet says, theory is grey but the great tree of life is green.
The words belong to Mephistopheles
The golden tree, IIRC: grün des Lebens goldner Baum. I never quite
understood how it could be green *and* gold, but I suspect the great
man was swept away by an irresistible Virgilian allusion.
Why should Mephistopheles have been thinking of Virgil (or Dante)?
Opposites are united in the image: gold symbolizing eternity and green
symbolizing perpetual renewal.
Mephistopheles is the eternal neinsager, the archetype of negativity--
and thereby of dialectic.
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things." Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
