Shinto
Shinto - meaning Summary
Small Consolations of Memory
Borges's 'Shinto' presents a sequence of modest, sensory moments—tastes, smells, names, small pains—that briefly lift us from sorrow. The poem treats these occurrences as spontaneous rescues: ordinary objects and recollections that restore presence for an instant. Its closing image of eight million Shinto deities traveling secretly across the earth and touching people before moving on frames those moments as fleeting, impersonal acts of grace rather than sustained intervention. The poem links private memory and small sensations to a quietly polytheistic sense of being noticed amid loss.
Read Complete AnalysesWhen sorrow lays us low for a second we are saved by humble windfalls of the mindfulness or memory: The taste of a fruit, the taste of water, that face given back to us by a dream, the first jasmine of November, the endless yearning of the compass, a book we thought was lost, the throb of a hexameter, the slight key that opens a house to us, the smell of a library, or of sandalwood, the former name of a street, the colors of a map, an unforeseen etymology, the smoothness of a filed fingernail, the date we were looking for, the twelve dark bell-strokes, tolling as we count, a sudden physical pain. Eight million Shinto deities travel secretly throughout the earth. Those modest gods touch us — touch us and move on.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.