What’s meaning but vanity? A word is a sound –
One of the handmaidens of the seraphim.
~ Osip Mandelstam
Of course even to say so requires a sense behind the sound. The immaculate musicalities of utterance should be no more than scaffolding to the basilica. Mandelstam ironically turns round the lament from Ecclesiastes to affirm instead that ‘vanity is all.’
