THOMAS J. COUSINEAU

  "The alchemist takes up and perfects the work of Nature."

                        -- Mircea Eliade, The Forge and The Crucible

"I said ,'A line will take us hours maybe;

Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,

Our stitching and unstitching has been nought.'"

                            -- William Butler Yeats, "Adam's Curse"

Introduction: The Art of Secret Sharing

Joseph Conrad, “The Secret Sharer”

      William Butler Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium”

      James Joyce, “The Sisters”

      Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

Chapter One:  Taking the Sky in Metamorphoses 

                "I can still take the sky -- there lies my path."

Chapter Two: Staging Rites in Oedipus the King

               “How can we cleanse ourselves — what rites?”

Chapter Three: Going Further in the Inferno

                    “. . . that narrow strait which Hercules marked with his warnings so that 

                    one should not go further"  

Chapter Four:  Setting It Right in Hamlet

                     “The time is out of joint.  O curséd sprite

                       That ever I was born to set it right.”

 Chapter Five:  Flying Away in Dubliners

                 "He longed to ascend through the roof and fly away to another country . . ."