From Sylvia Plath's Journal


What I've been getting around to saying all this time: want to quote from Yeats book something that struck me*: re Dryden's translation of Lucretius: "The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul." "Sexual intercourse is an attempt to solve the eternal antinomy, doomed to failure because it takes place only on one side of the gulf." Swedenborg: "The sexual intercourse of angels is a conflagration of the whole being..."

***

Of course angel sex is hard to pin down re details. Here's Milton's slant (Paradise Lost, Book VIII, Lines 617 to 629):

To whom the angel, with a smile that glowed
Celestial rosy-red, love's proper hue,
Answered: 'Let it suffice thee that thou know'st
Us happy, and without love no happiness.
Whatever pure thou in the body enjoy'st
(And pure thou wert created) we enjoy
In eminence, and obstacle find none
Of membrane, joint, or limb, exclusive bars;
Easier than air with air, if spirits embrace,
Total they mix, union of pure with pure
Desiring, nor restrained conveyance need
As flesh to mix with flesh, or soul with soul....


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