[lit-ideas] Re: Ask the Ayatollah
- From: "Steve Chilson" <stevechilson@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 07 Oct 2006 06:55:10 +0100
An enemy of life, good one.
"...The executioner on that fateful day, Jan Mydlar, used four swords
during the gruesome spectacle and needed six assistants to haul off the
corpses. Mydlar, a patriot himself, earned a place in the hearts of his
countrymen for wearing the black hood of mourning on that day instead of
his usual flame-red hood - and for lopping off each head with only one
stroke so as to lessen the suffering of the condemned.
An Englishman in the audience that day attested to Mydlar's dexterity,
saying that when his blade fell "it was as if the winds had blown the
heads from their shoulders."
Ten of the heads were placed in iron cages and hung for all to see from
the tower facade on the east side of Charles Bridge until Protestant
Saxons, during an occupation of Prague in 1631, removed the heads and
buried them in Tyn Church, whose bristling twin spires loom over Old
Town Square."
from the book of _Sorry I Can't Remember The Quote But Cut And Pasted It
Years Ago Without Attribution In A Word Programme"_
On Sat, 07 Oct 2006 01:27:26 -0400, "Eric Yost"
<eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:
> >>Christians do fast.
>
> Makes me think of the ending of _Thais_ by Anatole France.
> One of the characters is a self-mortifying monk, a stylite
> sitting on a pillar for twenty years. After twenty years,
> God shows up and gives the stylite a good talking to, saying
> the equivalent of, "What are you doing up here? You've been
> mean to all the people around you and mean to your own body
> and where has it brought you? Nowhere. You're no closer to
> me than you were before. While the people you've dismissed
> as superficial have grown in their love, you've been up here
> as an enemy of life."
>
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--
Steve Chilson
stevechilson@xxxxxxxxxxx
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