Termcarding

Made a start on the Union termcard, putting together design ideas (ie, the fun bit before sitting around and waiting for useless members of the Committee to write blurbs, find photos, etc etc etc).

Read another 50 pages of Trollope last night - starting to get more interesting. Was particularly struck by this section. It comes from George Vavasor's critique of people who do healthy things like climb up mountains...

I believe that most of them simply walk up the mountain and down again. But if they did, that avoids the question also. The poetry and mystery of the mountains are lost to those who make themselves familiar with their details, not the less because such familiarity may have useful results. In this world things are beautiful only because they are not quite seen, or not perfectly understood. Poetry is precious chiefly because it suggests more than it declares. Look in there, through that valley, where you just see the distant little peak at the end. Are you not dreaming of the unknown beautiful world that exists up there; - beautiful, as heaven is beautiful, because you know nothing of the reality? If you make your way up there and back tomorrow, and find out all about it, do you mean to say that it will be as beautiful to you when you come back?

Interesting how Trollope - who I don't think of as a "Romantic" novelist - employs the technique of characterisation that one might normally more associate with Bronte, with the mystery of nature standing in for a wild spirit. It also, in employing apophatic language, catches hold of a theological viewpoint not that widely expressed in contemporary religious writings. Ho hum, off to a party now...