certain slant of light :: essays research papers

How Nature Brings Emotions of observance The chief characteristic of this feeling drawn by the slant of calorie-free is its painful oppressiveness. "Oppresses," "weight," "hurt," "despair," and "affliction" convey this aspect. A large component in it is probably consciousness of the fact of death, though this is probably not the self-coloured of its content nor is this consciousness necessarily fully formulated by the mind. in so far here we see the subtle connection between the hour and the mood. For the anneal is winter, when the year is approaching its end. And the time is late afternoon (winter afternoons are trivial at best, and the light slants), when the day is failing. The suggestion of death is caught up by the weighty cathedral tunes (funeral music possiblybut hymns are alike much concerned with death) and by "the distance on the look of death." The indifference of the hour ("the landscape listens, Shadows hold th eir breath") is also suggestive of the quietude of death. But besides the oppressiveness of the feeling, it has certain impressiveness too. It is weighty, solemn, and majestic, like reed organ music. This quality is conveyed by "weight of cathedral tunes," "heavenly," " varnish" (suggesting the seal on some important official document), and "imperial." This quality of the mood may be partly caused by the stillness of the moment, by the richness of the slanting temperateness (soon to be followed by sunset), and by the image of death, which it calls up. The mood gives "heavenly" hurt. "supernal" suggests the immateriality of the hurt, which leaves "no scar" the source of the sunlightthe sky the net source of both sunlight and deathGod. The hurt is given internally "where the meanings are"that is, in the soul, the psyche, or mind-that part of one which assigns "meanings"consciously or intuitivelyto life and to phenomena like this. "None may teach it anything" some(prenominal) the sunlight and the mood it induces are beyond human correction or alleviation they are final and irrevocable"sealed." There is no lifting this seal this despair. "When it goes, tis like the distance On the look of death"The lines call up the image of the stare in the eyes of a dead man, not focused, but fixed on the distance.