"However, heaven be praised, she's gone, and if I believed she was in the moon, according to a book I once read, which teaches that to be the receptacle of departed spirits, I would never look at it for fear of seeing her..." - spoken by Partridge in Tom Jones, Bk. 8, Chp. 9
2.06.2008
The moon and the departed
This echoes some things (I should say that the character speaking this is referring to his despised wife who is no longer alive and he and Tom Jones have been talking about the moon and love and so on):
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3 comments:
It's certainly an interesting and unexpected line to read in a novel published in 1749. I read it twice to check I read it right the first time! Another indicator that G was drawing a much older teaching into a style suited to elements of the European mind. G presents a strange conduit (if it's accurate to describe him like that), yet it may be a fact that The Work as a practise is so pure (being wholly the realm of conscience) that The Work as a cultural/ideological phenomena could only survive in the milieu of popular culture (which it has) through a figure as fancy & colourful as G.
And remember the fact I came across recently that Cassian, known as a Celtic Christian theologian from France, or Gaul, or that region, has his writings included in the Philokalia, the so-called Eastern Orthodox (so-called solely Eastern Orthodox) body of teaching.
I.e. even that is more universal than is presented in our time.
Just thought that is relevant to the subject...
There was something else in Tom Jones that was similar to the above remark that I stupidly let go by without noting it, and now I can't even remember the subject...
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