lördag 27 december 2008

Farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem

... och åter och åter igen återvänder jag till Evelyn Waugh och Brideshead Revisited, som jag nog anser är den största roman som skrivits på det engelska språket:

My theme is memory,
that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time.
These memories, which are my life
- for we possess nothing certainly except the past -
were always with me.


... för att inte tala om den magnifika slutproklamationen:

Something quite remote from anything the builders intended has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time: a small red flame -- a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design, relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home, farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones.

Om man inte visste bättre skulle man nästan ha trott att Waugh var frimurare, med tanke på kombinationen mellan byggnadsmotiv och korsriddarsymbolik, men hans extremkatolicism gör nog att det är uteslutet ... the Pope doesn't like that sort of stuff. Men vilken engelska!

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