Ismaels Ax
After making sure that nobody was left in town, Ibrahim went towards the temple armed with an ax. Statues of all shapes and sizes were sitting there adorned with decorations. Plates of food were offered to them, but the food was untouched. "Well, why don't you eat? The food is getting cold." He said to the statues, joking; then with his ax he destroyed all the statues except one, the biggest of them. He hung the ax around its neck and left.--The KoranE.D.E.N. Southworth's novel "Ishmael." is pretty well known in literary circles. In it, Ishmael is a young man who grows up in poverty, but falls in love with a wealthy young woman. His love is unrequited. Just after Claudia leaves Ishmael he becomes very ill, but he picks up an ax and begins to feverishly chop wood. The effort makes him more gravely ill. He later speaks of this as a "turning point" in his life. The chapter starts with part of a poem by Browning:
"With such wrong and woe exhausted,
what I suffered and occasioned—As a wild horse through a city, runs,
with lightning in his eyes,
And then dashing at a church's cold and passive wall impassioned,
Strikes the death into his burning brain,
and blindly drops and dies—So I fell struck down before her!
Do you blame me, friends, for weakness?
'Twas my strength of passion slew me! fell before her like a stone;
Fast the dreadful world rolled from me, on its roaring wheels of blackness!
When the light came, I was lying in this chamber—and alone."
(source: Bangkokker)
posted by The artist formerly known as the Bulb. @ 2:05 PM
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