Consolations (Love Is an Art of Time)

“Consolations (Love is an Art of Time)” comprises “The Fugitive Gods,” “The Lighted Clearing,” and “The Body and the World.” “For behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. And now, go, write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever” (Isaiah 5:17, 30:8). This quotation was presented to me as the final paragraph of a review of “Lamentations: A Monument to the Dead World.” I have read it as bidding me how to complete “The Book of All the Dead” and so cite it here as a note on “Consolations.” “Consolations” is about resentment and its overcoming, that is, about the overcoming of the pastness of the past through grasping its presentness and through a thankful submission to the Wholly Other, since nothing is more obvious than that Hell is to be one’s own. (RBE)