I started listening to Handel’s ‘Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinagno’ again and it brought me back to my Medieval/Renaissance French Literature studies… Hmm… Savoury. The symbolisms and all the theories behind it, the ideals… it’s comforting to see that I still have all those references at my disposal and I hope it stays that way.
But that’s not what this entry is about. The plot of this ‘Oratorium’ by Händel is the ‘fight’ between Time and Disillusion for Beauty’s soul whose more drawn to simple, blinding Pleasure than truth and reality. And to see who’s in the right they start a feast of arias and musings trying to win over Beauty who refuses to give into the reality of passing time and age.
Time of course is sung by a man. The others are all women. Struggling women. Needless to say – judging from the title – that Time will win Beauty’s heart and she sees the light in the end. Reality and truth, real pleasure instead of purely eye daunting appearances.
There is a line sung by Time that struck me regarding the passing of so many veterans at the moment: even the strongest hero will bow at my might…
So does time win everything over? Is time all that rests when all other things have perished?
I don’t know how many poems and short stories, scraps have built up in my archive about this thought, but my guess is that they’ve reached quite a number.
Time is supposed to be a constant, something we all build our lives and securities on. Things that will pass. Reduced to ashes. That would be the depressing part of being in this world. The knowledge that the stability we may be able to linger in and that we think we’ve accomplished is just a thing of the moment that can be overthrown in the blink of an eye. And it doesn’t even take much to cast us humans out of our well trimmed categories and existences.
But as usual there’s always another side to things.
Time is the only thing that will keep us going. The knowledge of the ephemeral nature of being itself is the one thing that keeps us dreaming and striving.
And of course how could we ever overcome the blows we’re inevitably facing – the loss of family, failure, hurt, uncertainty, anguish – without the soothing constant passing of time. Things that projected into the future we would never think of living through, suddenly become small and simple, when being looked upon for a while. [That's probably why I am such a planning freak... <_<] Or tragedies we never think we’ll be able to live through, where we’re convinced that we’ll never see the light of day again, over time become a nagging remembrance at first and then disappear.
So maybe time is the only thing that really matters. Take the amount that’s given to us and use it as best as we can.
And I myself am struggling to come to terms with certain emotional issues I take comfort in this thought… maybe it’ll be the last thing that stays when all else is gone.
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