The Time's They Are a-Changin': Brainstorm Criticism Tone Poem Rant Thingie

incipit. Ovid's Metamorphoses v. fittingly anonymous genius's Beowulf. Both deal with time/change. Both see the changeableness of things, but write in different flavors. Ovid is more of the "littera scripta manet" variety (see his (facetious?) concluding auto-epigraph), and sees change/time as a positive/creative thing. Beowulf sees change in a much more melancholy, negative light. But, the Metamorphoseon also depict change as patternless, arbitrary and empty. Ovid's time has a certain "terrible lightness of being" quality: time expanded so infinitely that it becomes hollow. In Beowulf time plods ever on and on, growing in weight at the same time that it shrinks with age and weariness. In Beowulf history is much sadder, much older, but much more meaningful. fin.

✣

Reading Chesterton's biography of Blake in preparation for upcoming Blakeathon. Delivers w/ the usual poise and intellectual rigorvigor. In re John Flaxman (1755-1826), Chesterton states: 

He would admit no line into a modern picture that might not have been on a Greek bas-relief. Even foreshortening and perspective he avoided as if there were something grotesque about them -- as, indeed, there is. Nothing can be funnier, properly considered, than the fact that one's own father is a pigmy if he stands far enough off. Perspective really is the comic element in things.

This in the midst of philosophical expositions on Blake's early life & work. He eventually says that "Flaxman upside down is almost a definition of Blake" (i.e. Blake inherited Flaxman's con- and precision, but applied it with Blake's characteristic taste for the topsy-turvy. I heart Chesterton.

Also, rather like Flaxman's stuff for its precision. May try some copies.