DENIS DONOGHUE
31
style I refer
to
is judicial, hieratic, responsive to the sundry of the world
but free of its blandishments:
The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word
But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken
Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew
And after this our exile
The tone of this passage corresponds to abso luti on.
If
the poem is an
exam ination of conscience leading to a good Confession, absolution can
only take the form of a distinctively poised presence within language
itself.
VIII.
I
I\\AY BE AH!.E
to clarify this by quoting a passage frol11 Valery's "La
Pythie" and a comment on it by Elizabeth Sewell:
Honneur des hommes, Saint LANGAGE,
Discours prophetique et pare,
Belles chaInes en qui s'engage
Le dieu dans la chair egare,
Illumination, largesse!
Voici parler une Sagesse
Et sonner cette auguste Voix
Qui se connalt quand elle sonne
N'etre plus la voix de personne
Tant que des ondes et des bois!
We are to imagine Language, an abstraction to begin with, become a
god in the flesh. Sewell translates the lines into prose:
Honour of men, sainted LANGUAGE, discourse prophetic and
adorned, fair chains in which the god lost in the flesh is content to
