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©1993
BASID #127 |
©1993,1995
BASID #544 |
Beth Ames Swartz
A Story for the Eleventh Hour:
And the lotos rose quietly, quietly
acrylic, sliced geode, gold & silver leaf and mixed media on shaped canvas
48" x 36" (1.22m x 0.91m)
1993
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Beth Ames Swartz
A Story for the Eleventh Hour:
Reconciled among the stars
lithograph on Coventry Rag paper
16" x 12"; on 20" x 16" paper
1995
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Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
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Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars |
Eliot, T. S. The Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950,
(New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1952),
Four Quartets: Burnt Norton, I, p.118.
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Eliot, T. S. The Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950,
(New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1952),
Four Quartets: Burnt Norton, II, p.119.
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The word "lotos" is a variant of "lotus," an aquatic plant that, though it has roots in the mud, blossoms beautifully in the world above. Thus, the lotus is a symbol of purity and perfection because it grows out of mud but is not defiled by it, just as Buddha is born into the world but lives above the world. |
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The poetry of Eliot and the above print convey an unearthly mystery rooted in the earth but looking heavenward. Life feeds on life, yet life creates order from chaos. |
Eliot's deliberate use of the variant "lotos" plays on the word "Logos," a word that denotes both the cosmic reason of Greek philosophy and the Christian will of God. In Buddhism and Hinduism, the lotus represents a symbol for elevation to the last chakra , the attainment of spiritual awakening and enlightenment, the transformation to nirvana. |
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The image visualizes a postulate of philosopher Rupert Sheldrake; this postulate (A Morphogenetic Field and The Hundred Monkey Theory) theorizes that our race will move to Buddha-consciousness if 200,000 people achieve a state of enlightenment. Swartz pictures a universe where each star in the heaven(s) represents an enlightened being. |
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