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8.4.95 15.30 Philip's cafe (Wie Katoen)
    abjuring of Battles for a sublime

I feel completely invigorated again, 

I read earlier today Samuel Taylor Coleridge's view
Biographia Literaria, edited by George Watson, Dent/Dutton, London/New York, 1975. p. 180
that whereas Shakespeare 'darts himself forth, and passes into all he forms of human character and passion' Milton 'attracts all forms and things to himself, into the unity of his own ideal' and 'all things and modes of action shape themselves anew in the being of Milton; while Shakespeare becomes all things, yet forever remaining himself'.

And which of these ways of writing and being
do I really prefer,
in the abstract?


5.12.95
And as I pause after typing this I still feel some of that excitement. The feeling that, for all its apparent Christianity, Milton's way of writing is for me, as for it has been for many, more true than is almost any writing, except perhaps Shakespeare's.


(c) john chris jones 1995