Thursday, September 1, 2011

Forest Lawn: "Half In Love With Easeful Death"

Evelyn Waugh's brilliant 1947 piece "Half In Love With Easeful Death" imagines what scholars would make of the tombs and religious implications of Forest Lawn Glendale upon encountering it amongst the ruins of Southern California one thousand years in the future.  It is a highly entertaining and insightful read.  Read it read it read it.
"Nature will re-assert herself and the seasons gently obliterate the vast, deserted suburb. Its history will pass from memory to legend until, centuries later, as we have supposed, the archaeologists prick their ears at the cryptic references in the texts of the twentieth century to a cult which once flourished on this forgotten strand; of the idol Oscar - sexless image of infertility - of the great Star Goddesses who were once noisily worshipped there in a Holy Wood. 
...their steps will inevitably tend northward to what was once Glendale, and there they will encounter, on a gentle slope among embosoming hills, mellowed but still firm-rooted as the rocks, something to confound all the accepted generalizations, a necropolis of the age of the Pharaohs, created in the middle of the impious twentieth century, the vast structure of Forest Lawn Memorial Park."



4 comments:

http://gokristen.wordpress.com said...

Cool photo, did you take it?

Scott said...

Yep, years ago- http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottlowe/2322801731/

Pasadena Adjacent said...

I will read it in that I so enjoyed "The Loved One" Spent a lot of time after that pressing the buttons to electronic sermons. Forest Lawn can be the happiest place on earth.

Gail said...

I would love to be able to read the entire poem of Evelyn Waugh, 'Half In Loe With Easeful Death.'