Friday, November 11, 2011

the visions of every Pythagorean in history


from the Dear Claudia letter labeled [4:108]

In the visions of every Pythagorean in history (Euripides in The Bacchae, in Wordsworth’s “ode,” etc.) I discover the same visions that I have seen: what in Dante is called Earthly Paradise. (He is led to it and finds the lady singing and picking flowers; in dream after dream I’ve seen her and heard her singing; now I know who she is, and I know what the beautiful park which I see is. It is going to be here and not in the next world; it’s what Dante himself saw and depicted too clearly, and his vision is amazingly similar to that of the 6th century B.C. Greek Orphics.)

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