R O N   S T R A U S S 

June 2020

 

quotation:

 

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Somewhere it is said

that human life

is the music of the Gods,

that its sobs and laughter,

its songs and shrieks and orisons,

its outcries of delight and of despair,

rise never to the hearing of the immortals

but as a perfect harmony ...

They could not desire

to hush the tones of pain:

it would spoil their music!

The combination,

without the agony-tones,

would prove a discord unendurable

to ears divine.

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And in one way

we ourselves are as Gods,

since it is only the sum

of the pains and the joys

of past lives innumerable

that makes for us,

through memory organic,

the ecstasy of music.

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                                      —Lafcadio Hearn,

                                    IN GHOSTLY JAPAN, 1899

 

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