Muted by the dark groves of rhododendrons.

• +.. cross-cultural rhythms and melodies


• +..Zamrock


• +..

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It was by no means a random image; the way to Hell-Gate lay, traditionally, through the blackest, most impenetrable primeval forest. We know, too, that Dante began The Divine Comedy in a black period, after he had been banished from Florence at the age of thirty-seven. But a psychoanalyst, Elliott Jaques, has also interpreted the lines as a classic description of what he calls ‘the mid-life crisis’, that long period of hopelessness and confusion, a kind of male menopause, which often occurs at some point in the thirties or early forties and marks the transition from youth to middle age. It is a crisis about death and the death instinct and, according to Professor Jaques, it comes at that moment when, with your own children growing up and your parents dead, you find yourself suddenly at the head of the queue. You have to come to terms with the fact that you too, are really going to die. You also begin painfully to recognize that you, too, have your share of destructiveness working away inside. It is too late for youthful optimism, too soon for acceptance.
Alvarez, Al