You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
We cannot really say that time ‘is’ except in virtue of its continual tendency not to be.
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.
The blind poet of Eros is a paradox in time was well as in space. A desire to bring the absent into presence, or to collapse far and near, is also a desire to foreclose then upon now. As lover you reach forward to a point in time called ‘then’ when you will bite into the long-desired apple. Meanwhile you are aware that as soon as ‘then’ supervenes upon ‘now,’ the bittersweet moment, which is your desire, will be gone. You cannot want that, and yet you do. Let us see what this feels like.
Below is a fragment of a satyr play by Sophokles entitled The Lovers of Achilles. The fragment is a description of desire. It turns eros subtly, permitting different aspect of its perversity to come to light. At the center is a cold, original pleasure. Around the center move circles of time, different kinds of time, different dilemmas set by time. Notice that this poem is an analogy. Neither its pleasure nor its various kinds of time are to be indentified with eros, but the way they intersect may feel like eros to you.