That's Latin for "We are but dust and shadow".
And it made me think about my interpretation of that line and how that interpretation adapted itself to suit Eliot's line. I think of it like this:
Dust is a combination of dead skin cells, and hair, and all sorts of lovely things that no one really likes to think about. Dust is a residue. Dust is left behind by something.
A shadow is cast by something large and substantial enough to block light.
If we, as humans, are dust and shadow, what are we the dust and shadow of? A larger consciousness, or maybe just the universe in general: We are smaller, we are something that has developed, that has broken off of and grown out from a larger something.
And our size, our place in the universe, the realization that we are not the largest and most important thing out there, the recognition of our own insignificance: that's terrifying. And that is where you can see the fear in a handful of dust.
Fun fact number three: I really love my literature class. And Google.
Fun fact: I love Latin.
Fun fact number two: I love to read.
We are, in my Modern and Contemporary Literature class, currently reading T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land", which (as you probably know) is this really long poem about how much Eliot loves to confuse the ever-loving shit out of people.
I'm sorry, that was presumptuous.
(No, it wasn't. T.S. Eliot was kind of an arrogant douchebag, like a lot of other great writers.)
But seriously, we've only just started talking about it, but so far my impression is that "The Waste Land" is this nearly impenetrable bastion of emotion and allusions and desolation that I am not quite certain I want to access.
No offense to Eliot, because I love "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". Maybe not as much as I love Yeats or "The Tyger" or Rilke (oh, Rilke, you beautiful wordsmith of a man), but enough.
At any rate, a portion of the poem has stuck with me:
Most especially that last line: I will show you fear in a handful of dust. It's the title of a novel, I believe, by the same author who wrote Brideshead Revisited and whose name I cannot currently recall. But that isn't what made it stick with me. What did was the connection I made to that line, that single phrase for which we have Horace to thank (think: carpe diem): We are but dust and shadow.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
And it made me think about my interpretation of that line and how that interpretation adapted itself to suit Eliot's line. I think of it like this:
Dust is a combination of dead skin cells, and hair, and all sorts of lovely things that no one really likes to think about. Dust is a residue. Dust is left behind by something.
A shadow is cast by something large and substantial enough to block light.
If we, as humans, are dust and shadow, what are we the dust and shadow of? A larger consciousness, or maybe just the universe in general: We are smaller, we are something that has developed, that has broken off of and grown out from a larger something.
And our size, our place in the universe, the realization that we are not the largest and most important thing out there, the recognition of our own insignificance: that's terrifying. And that is where you can see the fear in a handful of dust.
Fun fact number three: I really love my literature class. And Google.
I love your labels. And your writing. And you.
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