Monday, December 31, 2012

What he might have written

Today I happened to come across a long forgotten study on English WW1 poets, a well rehearsed subject with me. And as I often do, I glanced at the section on Charles Sorley - and it happened to be very perceptive on him, so leaving that sense of bitter loss. Such a mind, such balance: mindlessly lost to humanity in a mindless war. As mentioned earlier Sorley has been a strangely alluring, central figure for me, having encountered him at the same age that he still had just time to experience. That is, at a very early age, and being so burningly different from him, his balance and his clarity, he burned into my mind, surely partially unjustly, unrealistically - but I think, after all these years, not essentially so. A strange meeting.