The Charade of Intellect

Percy Bysshe Shelley's bedroom faced west, out over a wide lawn with a shallow bank to roll down. All the smells and the colors! The smells of spring grass, the smell of mud, the smell of newly mowed grass... the color of the middle of that fair sward and the brownness of the edges where it withers from the heat of the walls or sidewalks which reflect the heat.
There were fishing lines...
But may you smell the oil which lubricates the reel, and do you espy the agate cat's eye stud upon the reel lock, pushed back and forth? Do you feel the ridge of the line leap in your hands? Can your fingers feel fish scales, serrated rows like cuticles of the water nymphs?

Shelley went to school when he was six with the Reverend Edwards, going each morning to the vicarage. Even were the poet to tell us, could we smell the earthen cologne of that habitat? - the cleanliness of a parson giving way to the heat of the day? - the sounds of the village that spill over the open windows like broken painted rosette windows in a gothic cathedral under siege of warfare?

There are words. The words are strung together. But there is no life without the soul and emotions and the drives of memory which is not merely recalled, but is more barbarously c-sectioned from the womb of our imagery and thrust upon the world. What is Intellect but a Charade?: boys dressed up as pantomime philosophy singing music hall songs?

Intellect is the survival of those species which are sent into the Universe lame of understanding. True understanding needs no words.

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