Literature and the war against stolen moments

[The Unnamable]

Have particular lines ever come to you at moments when you really needed them? I don’t mean for the purpose of wit or when you are on a game show but simply to lighten the load?

One night last year, I was waiting with a friend at the bus station in Charing Cross, London. A taxi pulled up and a very fat, well-dressed man of about fifty got out, all red-faced and puffing. Some ‘lads’, jolly with drink, immediately grabbed their opportunity to scrawl on the cave wall. “Oy, fatty, 'ot in there, is it?” was the first Wildean comment. Not content with demonstrating such verbal dexterity, one of them then decided to show what he could achieve in terms of manual dexterity. His bony fingers had been poking fat-sodden chips from the greasy carton he was holding, and into his mouth. He now launched the carton into the air over the fat bloke, who was clearly very frightened as he was showered with chips, vinegar and ketchup. The thrower had been one of a group of about ten young males between the ages of 17 and 20. My friend turned to the lad and said politely, “Pick that up.” The lout just snarled incoherently. There was a pause, I suppose as they were deciding whether or not to kick us to a pulp. A Sergio Leone moment ensued before they obviously decided we weren’t worth the effort and they lumbered off in a pack, grunting. The fat bloke looked at both of us and said apologetically, ‘thanks, anyway. It’s best to ignore them.”
The words that came to me were from Dylan (which I know some will say isn’t, strictly speaking, Literature). I said to him, “There’s always someone ready to make advances on your spirit and your soul.” He smiled at me and I honestly believe that it made him feel less like the hapless oaf that he must have been feeling.

Okay, it’s not Fallujah, no one was seriously hurt but these morons steal your moments. They do make ever more pervasive advances on your spirit and your soul. The noise they emit is the bubonic plague of our times. Certain lines make it a little easier to bear.

[Sami]

I’ve always liked “a man can be destroyed but not defeated” from Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”.

Of course, it’s a real cliché, but even though I read the book ages ago, that line and the character of the old man in general is something that really stuck with me. I guess I find the idea of the underdog struggling on against the odds a comforting theme.

[Anna Seis]

I don't want to talk about the situation now, but there are some Donne's verses that I remember when I feel there is a sort of hollow in reality:

...for his art did express
a quintaessence even from nothingness
from dull privation and lean emptiness
he ruined me, and I am rebegot
from absence, death, and darkness:
things which are not.

[The Unnamable]

“But I am by her death (which word wrongs her)
Of the first nothing, the elixir grown;”

Tenderest in parenthesis in poetry?

[Anna Seis]

Tenderest in parenthesis in poetry?[/QUOTE]

yes, and what inmense meaning condensed in it. Inmediately one can think:
oh do not die, for I will hate
all women so when thou art gone
that thee I shall not celebrate
when I remember thou wast one

I found these poems in an old book, a 1905's one, which belonged to a English Literature teacher whose name was Anna Smith (I sometimes choose books reading dedications) and held some verses in my memory. They are just like a warm hand in the middle of sea.

[Countess]

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

***

Okay, so that's not the most inspirational poem, but it makes me feel better.
That and repetition of the words "Perseverence of the Saints" and a line from my own poem

They say I must persevere to pass this test
this test of wretched malevolence!

[beer good]

I have a quote from Robert Musil's "The Man Without Qualities" (great book, incidentally) that I keep coming back to whenever I have to do something I really don't feel like doing. Especially if it involves having to fill out forms with numbers in them and the like.


The soul is that which crawls away and hides whenever someone starts talking about algebra.
(Loosely translated from the Swedish translation - if anyone has the correct quote in English, I'd be very grateful...)

[IrishCanadian]

"When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze."
...
"They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils."

I litterally found a field of nothing but hundereds of daffodils, just as Wordsworth described it. ..unfortunately its now under a new subdivision.

[The Unnamable]

I have a quote from Robert Musil's "The Man Without Qualities" (great book, incidentally)
If you’ve read this from cover to cover you have my utmost respect (worthless, I know). I’ve started it three times and given up after 50 or so pages because I think it requires more of me than I have left to give.

[beer good]

If you’ve read this from cover to cover you have my utmost respect (worthless, I know). I’ve started it three times and given up after 50 or so pages because I think it requires more of me than I have left to give.
Read it? Yep, every page including the unfinished material which makes up Part IV (and which can be skipped if need be, reducing it to a handy 1300 pages or so). Enjoyed it? Tremendously. It takes some time to get into, but once you're in it's a great read - and laugh-out-loud funny at times.

Understood all of it? Well... obviously, I can't say for sure. I'm certain there are things in there I didn't quite get. But then again, that's why one re-reads books several years later. I've got it scheduled for 2011 or so.

Give it a whirl sometime. It's not really a pageturner, but it's one of the most beautifully written (though I don't know what the English translation is like) and thought-provoking books on the 20th Century I've read; the whole idea that WE know what's happening, MUSIL knows what's happening, but the characters in the book have no idea whatsoever that they're marching head-first into one of the most insane periods in human history. Which, of course, is how history is made. I found myself thinking of Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" more than once.

[Scheherazade]

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

by Wordsworth

I remember these lines whenever I am frustrated with... life.

[The Unnamable]

Give it a whirl sometime. It's not really a pageturner, but it's one of the most beautifully written (though I don't know what the English translation is like) and thought-provoking books on the 20th Century I've read; the whole idea that WE know what's happening, MUSIL knows what's happening, but the characters in the book have no idea whatsoever that they're marching head-first into one of the most insane periods in human history. Which, of course, is how history is made. I found myself thinking of Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" more than once.
The English translation didn’t strike me as anything other than well written. As for beautiful, well as someone once said about translations – they are like women, “If they are faithful they are not beautiful and if they are beautiful they are not faithful.”

You’ve given me the urge to try it again over the summer.


Do you know Allan Massie’s A Question of Loyalties? Some of what you said reminded of a line from that book:

“We are responsible for actions performed in response to circumstances for which we are not responsible”


A Question of Loyalties, pt. 3, ch. 22