The Acid Diaries (Christopher Gray) / quote 113 of 125
The connection between beauty and death
Why, or so it was impressed upon me that evening, we hang on to life so desperately is because we are enjoying it so little; but once we are living life to the full, then the meaning of death changes entirely. Somehow it becomes the consummation of life. Before, whenever I compared joy to sorrow—to sorrow that seems so endlessly sensitive—joy had always appeared relatively flat and one-dimensional. Now I saw that this was because I had always missed the vital connection between beauty and death. But Keats had put his finger on it in Ode to a Nightingale: Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy!