Have you ever read something that haunted you? I don’t mean a brilliant bit of writing that moved you or that you admired, but something that tormented you like an old wound. There’s a poem by Ruth Stone--“Another Feeling"--that caused me a stab of anguish when I first read it, and has hovered in the back of my mind ever since. It’s actually not much of a poem, but it’s a demon to me. It comes forward and demands my attention when I least expect it. It insists on reminding me that the world is filled with cruelty fueled by good intentions; cruelty that can only be redeemed—if redemption is even possible—by the suffering of the conscience that created it. That’s the terrible paradox of morality.
More on this later. Meanwhile, you can read the poem here.
The Temptation of St. Anthony, Bernardino Parenzano, c.1494. Image from Web Gallery of Art.
4 comments:
It's a very fitting painting to illustrate the poem. That kind of pain is the worst kind.
N
Goosebumps on my arms.
Yes, I know what you mean. Of course, it was a feeling in a box...opened up by that whomper of a poem...which isn't to say that I wouldn't have seen that feeling again if I hadn't stopped at this post; only to say that the box a way to protect one from something that must exist.
I don't know if "box" comes up because of Pandora, but now that it's in my mind, such thinking...circling back to your paradox...
The box is a compelling thing, isn;t is? My own image is of rippling water--the trauma that ripples through Stone's conscience, which creates the poem that ripples through mine...
I'm sort of glad I'm not the only one moved by this poem. It's a very modest creation, almost deceptively so.
N, I think that painting is amazing. I never saw before I went looking for a picture for this post.
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