dead rubber

After perfunctorily posting a couple of chance Coleridge's quotes on atheism to secure some big points in the blog game, late last night boynton came across this post at the Cassandra pages. (via One Pot Meal)
Second in a 3 part series on Rozewicz and God, the poem "Without" - last night seemed to be the last word on the big question, the essential ambivalence framed by the opening and closing stanzas:

the greatest events
in man’s life
are the birth and death
of God...

life without god is possible
life without god is impossible

This is a great series of posts from a wonderful blog.

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Comments: dead rubber

It's kind of post-post-modern, isn't it? There is no truth, but we know we need the truth. Argh.
Posted by wen at September 9, 2003 03:36 PM

I guess even such eternal ambivalence is not neutral. We all lean towards one side of the infinte equation - or one side of the "post".
Personally I believe the latter impossibility
is more compelling. Er - that is - a godlessness would be too impossible to endure.

(Having posted this comment - I realise that this is probably not the most authentic reading of the poem - and that I've chosen to latch on to any possibility of hope on offer in the last line.)


Posted by boynton at September 9, 2003 03:55 PM

Weird isn't it, how we come back to it 'knowingly' - having spent the last century so eagerly unshackling ourselves from the oppression of faith (bad sentence, but you know what I mean) - scientifically & philosophically - only to find that we're quite possibly spiritually 'hardwired' anyway.
Posted by wen at September 9, 2003 04:07 PM

Oh - surely that's why the last line's last - unless the translator stuffed up.
Posted by wen at September 9, 2003 04:08 PM

hope so - but then is it hope, or resignation?
Posted by boynton at September 9, 2003 04:18 PM