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| Hilary Mantel [theguardian] |
from
Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies:
When [Thomas] Wyatt writes, his
lines fledge feathers, and unfolding this plumage they dive below
their meaning and skim above it. They tell us that the rules of power
and the rules of war are the same, the art is to deceive; and you
will deceive, and be deceived in your turn, whether you are an
ambassador or a suitor. Now, if a man’s subject is deception, you
are deceived if you think you grasp his meaning. You close your hand
as it flies away. A statute is written to entrap meaning, a poem to
escape it. A quill, sharpened, can stir and rustle like the pinions
of angels. Angels are messengers. They are creatures with a mind and
a will. We do not know for a fact that their plumage is like the
plumage of falcons, crows, peacocks. They hardly visit men nowadays.
Though in Rome he knew a man, a turnspit in the papal kitchens, who
had come face to face with an angel in a passage dripping with chill,
in a sunken store room of the Vatican where cardinals never tread;
and people brought him drinks to make him talk about it. He said the
angel’s substance was heavy and smooth as marble, its expression
distant and pitiless; its wings were carved from glass.
I wish I'd said that.
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