Angelus Arcanum

slouching towards bethlehem

POSTED BY: est120
UPDATED: Thursday, January 6, 2005 21:36
VIEWED: 4283
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EST120

Wednesday, January 5, 2005 8:23 PM

okay, on monday (i think!), TNT showed a rerun of angel titled "slouching towards bethlehem", then , later that day on jeopardy!, one of the questions was "what is slouching towards bethlehem". how coicidental is that?! :) has anyone ever read the original collection of essays? if so, how well does it relate to that particular angel episode? lorne uses it as an example of how horrible the things are going to get after he reads cordelia.

ZEEK

Wednesday, January 5, 2005 8:42 PM

I always wondered where that title came from. I read it and just thought, "What does bethlehem have to do with this?".

DRAGONFLYDIRECTOR

Wednesday, January 5, 2005 8:56 PM

It is from Yeats - it does apply!

W.B Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

"Observe Analyze & Respond"
Motto of the A.P.E.s
Alliance Protean Engineers

JEWEL

Thursday, January 6, 2005 3:01 AM

It was written after WWI and is about a world that has lost it innocence. So much destruction and uncertainty about what the future held.

GROUNDED

Thursday, January 6, 2005 11:47 AM

Worst episode ever.

NKYJAY

Thursday, January 6, 2005 11:57 AM

Same place I nicked the title of my fanfic from, along with a few River visions. Great poem, that

MAUGWAI

Thursday, January 6, 2005 9:36 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by DragonFlyDirector:
It is from Yeats - it does apply!

W.B Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
...

Thanks Dragonfly! The poem is also the basis for the Chinua Achebe novel Things Fall Apart, which I've read about a dozen times, but I've never seen more than the first four lines of the poem. I didn't even realize there were more lines. So I'm glad you shared.

"Dear diary, today I was pompous and my sister was crazy."