Sunday, January 13, 2013

Miltonic Tinsel

 Tinsel. An accident of a word. I think it means trite. OED explains differently. And then we have what Seamus Heaney calls an accident.

Milton in a letter to Diodati, in 1637 (let's not bother who Diodati was, for the present. . . oh okay Charles Diodati, close friend):

"Listen, Diodati,but in secret, lest I blush; and let me talk to you grandiloquently for a while. You ask me what I am thinking of? So help me God, an immortality of fame."

 For Milton, fame and immortality were one. I can understand that.
Wonder what he would feel if he had read Swami Vivekananda: "That thirst for fame is the worst of all filth." 

More poetry would have ensued probably.

Random thoughts.




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