Theos-Talk Archives (March 1997 Message tl00172)

Here is something I picked up from usenet.

Is the author referring to Comte de St. Germain who played an active part
behind the scenes during the French Revolution?

MKR
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I just finished reading Tanith Lee's new novel about the French
Revolution, "The Gods Are Thirsty".  It is a good story (as most of hers
are), and a horrifyingly realistic portrayal of just what our own
revoluton could have become, given a different political and social
climate.

It also has, in its final pages, some commentary from its protagonist, a
writer who helped start the Revolution, then became its victim.  We hear
from him shortly after his close encounter with Madame Guillotine,
speaking words I think you can appreciate:

   ...
   You say (of course), How can he speak to us now?  He's dead.  ...

   Why, because there is something left of me to shout, voiceless, maybe,
   but vocal for all that.  No, not my soul, not my ghost.  That is
   theosophy.  What, then?  Ah, but it's hard to describe.  Let me say -
   and conceivably you, who live, will understand me - let me say I can go
   on speaking because I have spoken.  I can live still because I have
   lived.  No atom ever lost.  Each of us will leave an underlying echo
   behind him.  One needs only to listen; you will hear.  And so you have.
   ...

   It comes to me - too late, naturally, and there is a rationale, too, in
   that lateness - that any man who tries to change the world, unless he
   is God or all the gods together, can manage much - but much of that
   much will be a nightmare and, worse, chaos.  Those who attempt the
   feat, the idealists and dreamers, are too drunk on their ideals and
   dreams to see the errors in their modus operandi.  ...

   Nevertheless, I will not relinquish the dream.  It remains before
   mankind, of which sacred brotherhood I have been a member, like a
   flaming beacon.  If passion cannot reach it, hope may.  ...  The
   facility to hope and dream is the birthright of men, by which they
   sustain themselves in the cold and darkness of the cosmos and of the
   heart.  And, as we learn, who knows but in the end we shall be wise
   enough to reach the distant light, and to live as gods live, But with
   the goodness of which felonious man alone, and never the gods, is
   capable.  For man is the wingless one who has learned to fly, high as
   birds, in the golden balloon of aspiration.  Oh, believe in this child
   that we are.

Enjoy...


P.S.  Please don't start reading this book <now>.  It's over 500 dense
pages, and we really need your full concentration on the current season
(and hopefully the next).  But file it away for future reference...

Frank McKenney            / OS/2 Advisor (OS2BBS)
McKenney Associates       / Richmond, Virginia / (804) 320-4887
Internet: rrs0059@ibm.net / TalkLink: WZ01123