The flesh is weak. Good!

December 18, 2014
Handle with Care

The otherwise vile Hogo de Bergerac, character in Donald Barthelme’s Snow White, does get this right:

“Now think, I ask you, of all those women who are beyond the moment of splendor. They are depressed. The minister comes to call and recommends to them the things of the spirit,  and tells them how the things of the spirit are more durable than the things of the flesh and all that.  Well he is entirely correct, they are more durable, but durable is not what we wanted.”

“Durable is not what we wanted” or what they want; rather we both want fragile - not tough, sturdy, everlasting, and so stale air, but weak, soft, ephemeral, even if rotting flesh.

          Thomas Carew: perswasions to enjoy
 

If the quick spirits in your eye

     Now languish, and anon must dye;

If every sweet, and every grace,

Must fly from that forsaken face:

     Then (Celia) let us reape our joys,

     E’re time such goodly fruit destroyes.

Or, if that golden fleece must grow

For ever, free from aged snow;

If those bright Suns must know no shade,

Nor your fresh beauties ever fade:

Then feare not (Celia) to bestow

What still being gather’d, still must grow.

     Thus, either Time his Sickle brings

     In vaine, or else in vaine his wings.

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