3WW CLXXIX

Dear Gentle Reader,

It's 3WW.

This week the prompt words are amaze, frail, and sacred.

Your starter is a titled picture with, as always, descriptions if you run your mouse over the image.

Then, as usual, I serve up three haiku/senryu, each with an American Sentence title.

For dessert, I close off with a musical offering.

So, promptly, away.

Let the games begin with amaze, frail, and sacred...

Amazing Grace, Newton's sweet sound--though he'd sold men, bound, in slavery...

frail prayers waft up,

borne with sacred incense swirls;

plead amazing grace

** True, John Newton (1725-1807) did end life campaigning with John Wilberforce for the abolition of slavery, but he started life as a slaver, and, though he had changed careers to become a curate, he had not denounced slavery when he penned 'Amazing Grace' in 1779.

The British Slave Trade Act of 1807, which Wilberforce and Newton campaigned for, became law little more than 9 months before Newton's death and abolished slavery in the British Empire.

Britain would take until 1833 to determine that slavery as an institution was inherently illegal.

That said, the Western world would not see slavery as being a jus cogens, an international legal wrong, or, more specifically, that a jus cogens itself could exist until the conventions for drafting the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties were commenced in 1949 and the text finally adopted in 1969 (see Article 53). It would still take until 1980 for the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969, to enter into force.

This whole 'aside' merely is my way of pointing out the frailty of some prayers, especially those implicitly contained within 'Amazing Grace', penned at the time by an unrepentant ex-slaver and slave trader.

Forget storge, philia, and agape; give me eros each day.

frail hearts quail, tremble.

love is sacred? hah! Violent!

stunned, amazed, we pant.

** Storge, philia, agape, and eros are the four forms of love in Classical Greek thought.

Storge, στοργή, refers to loving, familial affection.

Philia, φιλία, refers to friendship--the love between friends.

Agape, αγάπη, refers to an abiding, deep love and contentment.

Eros, έρως, finally, refers to passionate love. Eros doesn't have to be sexual, but Plato's modification of love, Platonic love, a non-sexual love, is a modification of eros--which point to the importance of sexuality in the non-Platonic eros.

Crowds queued (Paris-style) for her; Quasimodo tried to save her; she died.

frail Esmeralda's

sacred sanctuary fails;

amazed Q's heart breaks

** If you haven't read Victor Hugo's (1802-1885) 'Notre-Dame de Paris', or, 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame" then this little piece will surely fail. The only thing I will point to here is the ambiguity of 'Q' in the last line.

Normally this 'Q' would clearly refer to Quasimodo, but, with the title of this poem, 'Q' could also be the Parisian crowd which 'queued' outside of Notre-Dame to show its support of Esmeralda--fabulously misread by Louis XI, the King of France, in the book....

*** As per queuing 'Paris-style', don't think Paris of Hector, or of Helen, think French Revolution.

Think Eugène Delacroix and 'La Liberté guidant le peuple', or, 'Liberty guiding the people'...

An aside and a query. Does "to hector" in English come from Homer's Iliad?

Hector (eldest son of King Priam [of Troy] and Hecuba), who berated his brother, Paris, with lines like "Paris, you pretty boy, you woman seducer, why were you ever born? Why weren't you killed before your wedding day"...

Tschuess,

Chris

Ah... and the music for today is...

Hmm. My data storage site appears to be down...

I'll have to try to add the music later...

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