We've been remiss in talking up our amazing Summer 2010 issue on The Torch. The cover features Giuseppe Maria Crespi's "Aeneas, the Sibyl and Charon" (c.1700) and reflects Francesca Cauchi's essay "The 'Cadaverous Perfume of Schopenhauer' in Nietzche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra."
In The Aeneid, Aeneas sees the line of souls in the underworld, ready to take to the earth again, to relive life, and he wonders at the choice. This moment in the epic exemplifies one of the central concerns of this issue.
The question of "The Eternal Return," which asks whether one would live this life over again if one could, speaks to many of the pieces here. Vic Sizemore's short story, "Hush Little Baby," gives us a snapshot of a man rebuilding his life--his young daughter is in remission and he is falling in love with someone. What to make of a life brought to the brink of disaster? Can a person ever recover?
Similarly, the poet Diana Woodcock gives us Tiananmen's Square most iconic image:
Heavy with despair, I repeat parrot-like the same/ words, Peace, let there be peace. Though others/ accuse me of growing tedious, may my words/lodge in the collective memory--like the image/of the Chinese young man, Tiananmen Square,/holding back the armored truck...
Again the question: would this unknown man face the tanks again, if he had a choice?
We hope you find the work in the Summer 2010 issue of SHR as thoughtful and compelling as we did.
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