What consolation can there be for the awareness that everything we love is dying?

Beauty itself is not always a consolation. For it is inseparable from transitoriness. Be it the beauty of a girl, or a boy, or a flower, or a song. It must end and soon, if it is to be perceived by earthlings as beautiful. A flower that doesn't fade is hideous. A song that runs through our mind for an hour, let alone a day or a week, bores and irritates us and finally disgusts us. Beauty gives us pleasure. The keenest pleasure, if prolonged, must turn into pain. A toothache can last for a week, or a month, and seem only to grow sharper for its long duration. But there is no point in studying to prolong orgasm. For a orgasm prolonged for as much as an hour would have long ceased to be a pleasure. Human beings are geared for pain. Pain is what we are good at. If a thing of beauty is to be a joy forever, it's because we have the power to recall it when it is gone, drawing it into our imagination where it shines all the brighter with the surrounding shadow of bereavement. Death and annihilation are necessary conditions for the existence of beauty. Every poet who ever wrote has known that joy's hand is forever "at his lips. / Bidding adieu", as Keats said. No poet was more achingly aware of beauty than Keats, who was ill and dying all his short life. What consolation can there be for the awareness that everything we love is dying?

Transcrição minha da introdução a este episódio, um dos meus predilectos até ao momento, desta série.