It was like God grafting the life of man upon the body of the earth,
intimately conjuring with his own flesh.
All the while Paolo stood by, somehow excluded from the mystery, talking
to me, to Faustino. And Il Duro answered easily, as if his mind were
disengaged. It was his senses that were absorbed in the sensible life of
the plant, and the lime and the cow-dung he handled.
Watching him, watching his absorbed, bestial, and yet godlike crouching
before the plant, as if he were the god of lower life, I somehow
understood his isolation, why he did not marry. Pan and the ministers of
Pan do not marry, the sylvan gods. They are single and isolated in
their being.
It is in the spirit that marriage takes place. In the flesh there is
connexion, but only in the spirit is there a new thing created out of
two different antithetic things. In the body I am conjoined with the
woman. But in the spirit my conjunction with her creates a third thing,
an absolute, a Word, which is neither me nor her, nor of me nor of her,
but which is absolute.
And Faustino had none of this spirit. In him sensation itself was
absolute--not spiritual consummation, but physical sensation.
Pages:
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191