Brother Paul saw me off, repeating his assurance that it had been an honour. On the road in the bright sunshine, I found myself envying him. But precisely what was it that I was envying? The warmth of the cocoon that surrounded him? His certainty? The joy that peeped out again as we shook hands? His faith itself? To some extent, of course, all of these, but there was something else: his courage. The truth is that I am unable to believe that when Christ said: 'My Kingdom is not of this world' he meant that it was. Among the fifty monks of Notre Dame d'Aiguebelle, it was possible to see, misty but unmistakeable, the point. The enclosing shell of the monastery becomes a symbol of what must be the ultimate truth not only of Christianity but of all religions: the Kingdom of Heaven is within. For the monks within the walls, for the rest of us, within the human heart, which has room enough for all the walls there are. We all carry within our hearts a Notre Dame d'Aiguebelle, ...
Comments
By the way, Gergiev is partly responsible for the staging as well, not just for the music, so he bears some of the blame that the reviewer puts on the credited director and designer.
But I know lots of women who are Wagner fans, including one friend who did her Ph.D on him. And when I go I leave my fiancé at home.
I am not sure how he can possibly justify such a conclusion from Camilla Windsor, his wife and "I was told". This isn't serious researched journalism. This is just impressionistic feelings. Which is what I do on my blog, for my own amusement, but I'm amateur. I assume he's getting paid for that piece of fluff.
I think the guardian has decided that their target readership is a sneering superficial 25 year old with a pretend degree and working in meejah, and they gear most of their non hard news articles to that person, ignoring people who have been reading The Guardian for 25 years - or longer.
Gert
Other than that, I agree with the commentator above, the review on "The Guardian" is a rather silly article. And Chancellor manages also to insult the Welsh in a strange display of English supremacist belief, something that might have worked in Queen Victoria's times.
(Not being English, Welsh, nor British in general, I may be missing something in my criticism.)
Beethoven (not any great fan either) was one of the lamest persons of renown of his age. Misogynist, mean, a perfect scrooge, tyrannic with his nephew (he sued his own sister to wrestle the kid from her), that does'nt make his music less interesting.
And if GW Bush has some liking for some music, whatever it is, should we deem it automatically despicable?