A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter T

Theodicy

Philosophy
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Theodicy is the philosophical attempt to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with the belief in an omnipotent, perfectly good God. It justifies divine goodness.

Detailed Definition
Leibniz coined the term. In poetry, it is a theme of lament, questioning, and existential angst. Poets confront the problem of evil, asking why a good God allows suffering. This leads to poems of protest, despair, or tentative faith. Theodicy gives poetry a profound moral and spiritual weight, as it grapples with the most difficult questions of human existence.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poem that questions why a good God allows suffering, like a poem about the Holocaust, is a theodicy; The complaint against God in a poem like "Lycidas" by Milton is a form of theodicy; A poet's attempt to justify the ways of God to man, like Pope's "Essay on Man," is a theodicy; A poem that finds meaning in suffering, like some of the work of Rilke, is a form of theodicy.
Additional Notes
Theodicy is the philosophical and theological attempt to resolve the problem of evil: to reconcile the existence of suffering, pain, and injustice in the world with the belief in an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God. It is a "defense" of God's goodness in the face of evil. This concept is a central theme in religious and existentialist thought. In poetry, theodicy appears as a theme of lament, questioning, and spiritual crisis. Poets confront the problem of evil, often in response to historical catastrophes or personal tragedies. This leads to poems of protest, despair, or tentative faith, giving poetry a profound moral and spiritual weight as it grapples with the most difficult questions of human existence.
Also Known As
Divine justice Problem of evil Theodicy proper
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