As I finished reading it tonite, I want to give one final post from Oakley Hall's Warlock before it is placed with the other forgotten books in a stack next to my bed. The passage precedes the confrontation between the once deified marshall who has lost his moral compass and the deputy who must confront him, knowing the certain outcome will be his own death, his own sacrifice.
[Ed. note: The passage includes the word "Gethsemane". For those of us who are not biblical scholars, wiki provides as follows: Gethsemane is a garden at the foot of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem believed to be the place where Jesus and his disciples prayed the night before Jesus' crucifixion. Jesus' anguish in Gethsemane was so deep that "his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground."]
-----------------------------------
Outside there is only darkness, pitifully lit by the cold and disinterested stars, and there is silence through the town, in which some men sleep and clutch their bedclothes of hope and optimism to them for warmth. But those I love do not sleep, and see no hope, and suffer for those brave ones who will fall in hopeless effort for us all, whose only gift to us will be that we will grieve for them a little while; those who see, as I have come to see, that life is only an event and violence without reason or cause, and that there is no hope that there is an end but the corruption and mock of courage and of hope.
Is not the history of the world no more than a record of violence? It is a terrible, lovely, loveless thing to know it, and see -- as I realize now that doctor saw before me -- that the only justification is in the attempt, not in the achievement, for there is no achievement; to know that each day may dawn fair or fairer than the last, and end as horribly wretched or more. Can those things that drive men to their ends ever be stilled, or will they only thrive and grow and yet more hideously clash one against the other so long as man himself is not stilled? Can I look out at these cold stars in this black sky and believe in my heart of hearts that it was this sky that hung over Bethlehem, and that a star such as these stars glittered there to raise men's hearts to false hopes forever?
This is the sky of Gethsemane, and that of Bethlehem has vanished with its star."
[Ed. note: The passage includes the word "Gethsemane". For those of us who are not biblical scholars, wiki provides as follows: Gethsemane is a garden at the foot of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem believed to be the place where Jesus and his disciples prayed the night before Jesus' crucifixion. Jesus' anguish in Gethsemane was so deep that "his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground."]
-----------------------------------
Outside there is only darkness, pitifully lit by the cold and disinterested stars, and there is silence through the town, in which some men sleep and clutch their bedclothes of hope and optimism to them for warmth. But those I love do not sleep, and see no hope, and suffer for those brave ones who will fall in hopeless effort for us all, whose only gift to us will be that we will grieve for them a little while; those who see, as I have come to see, that life is only an event and violence without reason or cause, and that there is no hope that there is an end but the corruption and mock of courage and of hope.
Is not the history of the world no more than a record of violence? It is a terrible, lovely, loveless thing to know it, and see -- as I realize now that doctor saw before me -- that the only justification is in the attempt, not in the achievement, for there is no achievement; to know that each day may dawn fair or fairer than the last, and end as horribly wretched or more. Can those things that drive men to their ends ever be stilled, or will they only thrive and grow and yet more hideously clash one against the other so long as man himself is not stilled? Can I look out at these cold stars in this black sky and believe in my heart of hearts that it was this sky that hung over Bethlehem, and that a star such as these stars glittered there to raise men's hearts to false hopes forever?
This is the sky of Gethsemane, and that of Bethlehem has vanished with its star."
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
Sidenote: I didn't see Hov's glasses, and google offered no assistance. Hopefully I'll run across them later, but I doubt it. Bummer.