In the Wallace collection in London hangs one of Nicolas Poussin’s great paintings, A Dance to the Music of Time. As the winged and grey-bearded Father Time plays a lyre the allegorical figures of the Seasons of life, Poverty, Labour, Wealth and Pleasure, dance an eternal round to his music. It was a painting that provided an inspiration and title for Anthony Powell’s sequence of 12 novels. Nick Jenkins, the central character of the novels, reflects on Poussin’s painting: “The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure, stepping slowly, methodically sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance.”
Now, as we move from 2008 to 2009, there is a consciousness of the passing of time, of past, present and future, and perhaps a listening for what the music of time might be.
I saw this morning a quote from Saint Augustine in The CCEL Times “Classic Reflections” that is very relevant to the subject of time and its evidence of our mortality.
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Classic Reflections for the New Year: Augustine on Psalm 90:
‘Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made: and from age even unto age Thou art’ (v. 2). Thou therefore who art for ever, and before we were, and before the world was, hast become our refuge ever since we turned to Thee. … But he very rightly does not say, Thou wast from ages, and unto ages Thou shalt be: but puts the verb in the present, intimating that the substance of God is altogether immutable. It is not, He was, and Shall be, but only Is. Whence the expression, I Am that I Am; and, I Am ‘hath sent me unto you;’ (Exod. iii. 14.) and, ‘Thou shalt change them, and they shall be changed: but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail.’ (Ps. cii. 26, 27.) Behold then the eternity that is our refuge, that we may fly thither from the mutability of time, there to remain for evermore.
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