ABSTRACT
I knew you would wake him up if you went on making that noisy blood. He says the consistency of his mind never recovered. All he could do was write Opticks and be the Master of the Mint, a mental white dwarf. He never erupted again! Poor Newton! Poor Shakespeare! Poor Galileo, Descartes, Freud, Milton; whose are they—the faces, faint revealed, yet sure divined, the 'famous ones'—ante Agamemnona multi—the mute, inglorious ones? They saw the promised land, the mirage, the fame which is man's last and first infirmity of noble minds. Last, but not least infirmity, the weaker, least powerful helmsman waiting Palinurus-like to be hurled from the throne of the stern, the leader who obeys and by whose position all are ordered to steer. Even Aeneas is hurled from his trust in his steersman by a god whose true face is a disguise which conceals yet another god behind the mask of a benevolent, calm, inviting, alluring, seducing sea. The many-wiled Odysseus, Moses, Meskalam Dug, Arthur, Alexander—où sont les neiges d'antan? And what seductions, treasures remain to be unveiled, concealed (though betrayed) by Memory and its binocular, Desire?
