Such Knowledge

After such knowledge, what forgiveness?
TS Eliot

Pre-dawn this morning that line by TS Eliot came into my head — After such knowledge, what forgiveness? — for the first time since I can't remember when. That's funny, that line used to live in my head, daily: 1956 or so when I first read it, through 1961, '64 when it was a regular visitor. It's been so long now since I've read any TS Eliot at all I don't even remember which poem the line is from!

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Knowledge, forgiveness: Christian themes, pk themes. TS Eliot themes.

But it's 2010! What does the Twenty-first Century have to do with knowledge? with God? with forgiveness?

Of course it's the Christian shtick that we can be forgiven no matter what: if we are repentant. if we put our trust in the Lord.

But we're not repentant! What trust do we put in the Lord? We're not contrite. If we're contrite, say, over Vietnam, what are we doing bombing Afghanistan?

Are we bombing Afghanistan? I don't know. I no longer know anything. That I ever thought I knew much was all illusion, an illusion forcibly inherited from my far from honest or intelligent or knowledgeable or forgiven culture.

PS I see I had it in my quotes files, at Knatz.com and at pKnatzQuotes blog. So it has been in my head more recently that I'd said. Wrong about another thing.