The Flaming Sword

Nobody stays in the garden of Eden… they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget.

Text: James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room, New York: Dial Press, 1956
Image: Jan Brueghel the Younger, The Expulsion from Paradise, oil on copper, 17th century, private collection