Alan Jacobs' newsletter, this morning, had a link to this description of an encounter with W.H. Auden:
Auden had a cracked and wrinkled face, like a baked mudflat, and he told me that he would soon be dead. (Indeed, he died a couple of years later.)
"I've learned a little in my life," he said. "Not much. But I will share with you what I do know. I hope it will help."
He lit a cigarette, looked at the ceiling, then said, "I know only two things. The first is this: There is no such thing as time." He explained that time was an illusion: past, present, future. Eternity was "without a beginning or an end," and we must come to terms with what underlies time, or exists around its edges. He quoted the Gospel of John, where Jesus said: "Before Abraham was, I am." That disjunctive remark upends our notions of chronology once and for all, he told me.
I listened, a bit puzzled, then asked: "So what's the second thing?" "Ah, that," he said. "The second thing is simply advice. Rest in God, dear boy. Rest in God." ....
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