found this quote while sorting through 11 boxes of books, trying to decide which are coming down to dallas with me. i used this quote in my thesis (on The Waste Land). cleanth brooks is one of the school of new critics and i like him a lot.
"Love is aesthetic of sex; lust is the science. Love implies a deferring of the satisfaction of the desire; it implies a certian asceticism and a ritual. Lust drives forward urgently and scientifically to the immediate extirpation of the desire. Our contemporary wasteland is in large part the result of our scientific attitude--of our complete secularization. Needless to say, lust defeats its own ends ... 'the change of Philomel, by the barberous king' is a fitting commentary." (cleanth brooks in modern poetry and the tradition, 1939)
the Church maintains a balance between aestheticism and ascetisim, producing both the desert fathers and the high renaissance. She has both the solemn high feast days and long seasons of celebration, but these mean very little without the periods of fasting. the culmination of this paradox is the Blessed Mother, ever Virgin.
so much more could be said but, as usual, so little time.
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