The Anathemata
Rite and Fore-time (continued)
O Europa!
how long and long and long and very long again, before you’ll maze the waltz-forms in gay Vindobonaa in the ramshackle last phasesb; or god-shape the modal rhythms for nocturns in Melk in the young-time;3 or plot the Rhaetian limits in the Years of the City.4
But already he’s at it
the form-making proto-maker
busy at the fecund image of her.
David Jones notes
3 The reference is to the Benedictine abbey of Melk, in Austria, which I am told was one of the great centres of church music.
4 Cf. the Limes Raetiae, which marked the limits of the civilized world in the Danube district.
additional notes
a Vienna.
b ‘the sagging end and chapters close’: the decline of the West (Spengler). Contrasted also with ‘young-time’ [page 49].
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