A memorable fancy, a veritable feast — Hair Shirt Chronicles

A facially sincere descriptive statement from a man behind a mask who traffics in elliptical apogethms like Johann Climacus:

What is going on now is a widespread rejection of the ruling authorities and their beliefs, on the part primarily, but not only, of the American youth at large. This is similar to the rejection of communism by dissidents and youth in the Soviet bloc in the 1970’s and 80’s, and driven by similar causes.

An artistically sincere evocative statement from a man whose vision came conveyed by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives:

The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert that God spoke to them, and whether they did not think at the time that they would be misunderstood, and so be the cause of imposition.

Isaiah answered: “I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception: but my senses discovered the infinite in everything; and as I was then persuaded, and remained confirmed, that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences, but wrote.”

Then I asked: “Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so?”

He replied: “All poets believe that it does, and in ages of imagination this firm persuasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything.”