Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Carolyn
Kizer
Thomas A.
Tweed
Lawrence
Dugan
Michael
Caesar
Chapter 29 -- The Underground River as Metaphor
A Month in Summer Kenyon
Review
July 1962
At Home on the Earth,
edited by David Landis
Barnhill
Orwell and
Catholicism
Linguae stile di
Giacom Loeopardi Atti
dell'VIII Convegnion
ternazionadlei studil
eopardiani
Ruth Morse Medieval Biography,
History as a Branch of
Literature
Theresa M.
Krier
Francis
Mathy
Gedaliahu
Stroumsa
Craig
Wollner
Worldmaking Spenser,
Explorations in the
Early Modern Age,
edited by Patrick
Cheney and Lauren
Silberman
Modern Japanese
Stories, by Ivan Morris
The Gnostic
Temptation
The Portland Red
Guide, Sites & Stories
of Our Radical Past
MELUS
April 2000
Modern Age
Summer 2006
Modern
Language
Review
July 1996
Modern
Language
Review
April 1985
Modern
Philology
Nov. 2001
Monumenta
Nipponica
1963
Numen
December
1980
Oregon
Historical
Quarterly
Spring 2008
DRAFT 1122//66//22001122
And love -- doesn't it endure
somewhere peacefully, LIKE AN
UNDERGROUND RIVER, beneath all
this dust and meaningless commotion
on the surface?
A concern to live responsibly in nature
runs through this evocative anthology
LIKE A SUBTERRANEAN STREAM.
Ruminating in print over how a writer's
social and political beliefs seem to
move beneath what he writes LIKE AN
UNDERGROUND STREAM.
Leopardi's stated desire to create "a
modern national language," and at the
same time to reach back to the old,
"illustrious," language separated from
the present by the chasm that the
seventeenth century opened in the
nation's literature, runs LIKE AN
UNDERGROUND STREAM beneath
many of the contributions to the 1991
conference.
I wish to insist upon the importance of
Suetonius, whose influence flows here
AS AN UNDERGROUND STREAM,
there as a clear river, and everywhere
nourishes medieval attitudes to the
writing of lives either directly or through
the medium of his imitators.
A "poet's poet" whose influence moves
through later writing LIKE AN
UNDERGROUND RIVER, less easily
mapped than Shakespeare's or
Milton's
How could I imagine a love LIKE A
SUBTERRANEAN STREAM, with no
sunshine and no one to know where
the water comes from and goes.
Such a more or less avowed inclination
toward Gnostic views or attitudes can
admittedly be detected AS AN
UNDERGROUND STREAM
throughout western intellectual history.
A current of radical thought and action
running through its past LIKE AN
UNDERGROUND RIVER -- swift,
seldom seen, but occasionally
bubbling to the surface.
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