Notes to part two
Trockenberenauslese is the highest grade of German dessert wine. To get it, one waits until the grapes are almost rotted on the vine. The shape of my mind is such that I would expect the best wine grape to be at the ripest, purest stage. But that is not so, better wine is produced by the grape past its apparent prime, near death. This is compared to the wonderful palette of autumn, and the idea that something is most itself as it approaches death. Somehow, the individual qualities have a last blaze of glory, overwhelming the characteristics shared with others of the species. Referring this idea to the personal quality of death, the loneliness of the individual in facing it, the reflection on one's private journey. But a sense, too of the uniqueness of the individual, concentrated into a sort of harvestable berry, so that we all contribute to a wine, "filling the flask of history delectably". |
