Status Updates From Perseus in the Wind

prospero is "good" and "generous" and "innocent"? prospero? the tempest's prospero? really? hmm.

'we do not deal, when we write, only with words we use: we deal also with all those which, unspoken, come to the reader's mind: it is not what we actually say, it is what we make him think and see that counts as literature; and our words are a mere surface, beyond which should lie the living universe, or as much of it as all our powers can span.'

'anyone who tries to write knows that there is not the simplest most tangible thing in existence that can be described entire. the roots of all go down unchartered, like sea rocks whose wizened surface the smallest waves lick over -- though great mountains and submarine valleys may underlie them, with monsters or mermaids in their depths.'

'in the iliad, the anger of achilles is terrible as the morning star: this is beauty indeed: the young lover sees it with fear and rapture, dawning in the eyes of his beloved, "terrible as an army with banners". such is all beauty -- a pleasure and a pain, the flash of an opening window into depths upon depths of light, a revelation of awe.'