Just returned home from a weekend in London. Went specifically to see the Blake exhibition at the Tate. It was moving and terrifying --a touch of the holy and of the mad raging muse. Also a special exhibit on the Sublime in art--again, numinous terror. My knees almost gave out several times. They went all wobbly again as I stood before the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon Friezes, and a pair of ten-foot chimera sentinels from the gates of an ancient Assyrian town--all at the British Museum. Saw a moving production of Troilus and Cressida--and fell half in love with Cressida--at the Globe theatre.
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Found myself wondering why the Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Assyrian goddesses didn't move me nearly much as the Celtic and Romano-Celtic ones did in Bath. [erm, the Gaul and Roman ones at Cologne did move me rather, as I recall, though still not like Aquae Sulis]. As for the Greek and Roman sculptures, maybe they were too sophisticated: the best sculptors that money can buy, the grand patrons, etc. I suspect I have much to learn about the Egyptian ones, however. Elizabeth Cunningham's Maeve books have awakened some fascination--that added to H.D.'s poetry. Strange, realizing just now how so much of my weekend centred around sights and ideas that obsessed H.D. I even walked through Bloomsbury -- it being the 80th anniversary of Faber and Faber and all...though am feeling massively grumpy with T.S. Eliot lately.