Allen and David,
Interesting reads on the poem. I don’t know the Petrarch sonnet, so that wasn’t my initial read. I read it as something of a cri de coeur or an existentialist poem, though with something of the performative of the poet mixed in.
My problem with lines 11-12 is ‘simple’, which to me can’t be other than a profession of faith, since IMO nothing in the empirical order proves things to be ‘simple’ -- I say this pace both Aquinas and Nietzsche. So the poem seems to me either ironic, or a desperate, voluntarist and not wholly convincing movement of faith. I read it more as the latter, but I admit I'm mostly unschooled in ESVM and her life.
Btw, writing this I thought of Robert Hass’s Praise, with that bewitching opening narrative:
We asked the captain what course
of action he proposed to take toward
a beast so large, terrifying, and
unpredictable. He hesitated to
answer, and then said judiciously:
“I think I shall praise it."
M
Last edited by Michael F; 12-12-2018 at 05:41 AM.
Reason: order!
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