Monday 10 February 2014

Ekphrasis

Eternal Spring | Auguste Rodin
There is a leg, perfect in its strength, proportioin and usefulness. 

That leg is unapologetic.  It says, 'see what a man is.'

It walks, it runs, it has muscle, sinew, memory; its structure is transparent. Everything about it proclaims its nature. Darkness defines its shape, protects and connects to its masculinity.  Strength leads eye, mind and body to dangerous places.; pleasure and death.

That leg says, 'look at me, see what I can do, put me to use.  I'll wrap myself around your soft body and forever imprint myself on your life.'

If a leg could talk, that is.

And then I read from Benjamin's essay in praise of Karl Kraus:

'If style is the power to move freely in the length and breadth of linguistic thinking without falling into banality, it is attained chiefly by the cardiac strength of great thoughts, which drives the blood of language through the capillaries of syntax into the remotest limbs.'

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