Transmissions from the front lines
This great evil – where’s it come from?
How’d it steal into the world?
What seed, what root did it grow from?
Who’s doing this?
Who’s killing us, robbing us of life and light?
Mocking us with the sight of what we might of known?
Does our ruin benefit the earth, aid the grass to grow and the sun to shine?
Is this darkness in you, too?
Have you passed through this night?
I think it is in us all but we have the light too… and so do you
remember the light – http://bit.ly/oAeLzk
remember your light jimgroom and come back to ds106
As far as I can tell, I am the only person on the Internet who has ever noticed that this is almost a direct quote (the first couple sentences, anyway) from book seven of St. Augustine’s Confessions.
Voilà: http://goo.gl/f70XS
Nathan,
Awesome find, that is the first I have heard about this connection. And it makes me wonder how many of those philosophical monologues are modernizations of other philosophers about the horrors of war and the nuanced face of evil. You rock! Thin Red Line and Terrence Mallik FTQW.
Ha! Thanks. Just a little of the old, y’know, analog humanities at work. I wish I could say that I was so familiar with Augustine that when I saw Thin Red Line I recognized the quotation, but it went the other way around — when I reread Augustine for a course I was teaching, I got to that part and thought, “Hey, this sounds familiar…”
This quotation alone, though, would be enough to make me love Malick, even if I didn’t think his movies were some of the most brilliant things I’ve ever watched.
I love that movie and I love what you ate doing with that class even though I don’t get all of it. Is Dr. Oblivion coming back?
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