Love survey
Please select three of the following proverbs below about love which you would accept as
being true.
Hot love is soon cold.
English proverb, 1530
Blue eyes say "Love me orI die";
Black eyes say "LOve me or I kill thee."
Spanish proverb
If love be timid, it is not true.
Spanish proverb.
Love tells us many
things that are not so.
All's fair in love and war.
English proverb, 1620
Love well, whip well
English proverb, 1733
The course of true love
never did run smooth.
English proverb, 1595
Love is blind.
C.
Ukrainian proverb
To lovea woman who scorns you is to
lick honey from a thorn.
Welsh proverb
It is better to have loved and lost, than never to
have loved at all.
English proverb, 1700
1390
Love 'em and leave 'em.
American saying, 1910
fl
fi
The Head
The days pass and the head remains unchanged, perfectly
fresh so long as the woman keeps the water in the bowl at a
steady level.
The woman is disturbed by the presence of the head and
5 occasionally thinks of throwing it into the garbage. She is
deterred from doing so by the recollection of her husband's
intense aesthetic sense and the realization of how repugnant
his head would nd such an environment. She considers
Michael Bullock
The Head
A man is walking home from work. The soles of his shoes
wear out so fast that in no time at all he is walking on his
5 stockinged feet, then on his bare soles.
10
His feet wear away in their turn, then his legs. When his legs
have gone entirely he walks on his hands. Then his hands
wear away and his arms after them. His body wears away as
he wriggles along, until by the time he reaches his front door
10 there is nothing left of him but his head, which he is just able
to deposit on the doorstep.
The man's wife opens the door to look out and sees her husband'shead on the doorstep. She picks it up by the hair, looks
into its eyes and says pityingly: “Well, there was never much
15 moreof you anyway." The head only mutters unintelligibly in
reply. It seems to have retained the power of speech but not
"Water."
The woman goes out to the kitchen and returns with a jug of
water, which she pours into the bowl around the head, being
25 careful not to put in enough to make the head
leaves it.
9
11
15
20
to wriggle along: sich dahinwinden.
to deposit: absetzen, niederlegen.
unintelligibly (adv.): unverständlich.
dishevelled: zerzaust, unordentlich.
oat. Then she
taking it out into the countryside and leaving it in some beautiful spot among trees and plants with a view of the mountains
and the ocean. But she fears that some animal, a dog perhaps,
or a bear, might mutilate it and drag it off to some repulsive
site such as a kennel or a cave. Therefore she leaves the head
where it is.
15 In time, as is only to be expected, the woman takes a lover.
The two of them do all in their power to prevent the head
from seeing what is going on; but of course they cannot conceal the situation from it.
The woman's wish to be freed from her husband's head be20 comes stronger than ever, but various
the energy to make use of it.
The woman takes her husband's head indoors and places
it in a bowl on the coffee table. She runs a comb through
20 the hair, which has become dishevelled as she picked up the
head. She is about to leave when the head mutters faintly:
23
25
considerations
of a
moral and aesthetic nature prevent her from taking decisive
action.
Then one day, as she is topping up the water in the bowl, the
head suddenly sinks its teeth into her wrist, which she has
incautiously allowed to brush past its lips. The woman shakes
her arm und whirls it round her head in an effort to dislodge
5 garbage: Müll.
6 to be deterred from doing s.th.: davon abgehalten, abgeschreckt werden, etwas zu tun.
7 repugnant: widerwärtig.
12 to mutilate: verstümmeln.
repulsive: abstoßend, abscheulich.
13 kennel: Hundehütte.
21 decisive: entscheidend; entschieden.
26 to dislodge: entfernen, abschütteln.
fi
fi
fi
fl
fi
Michael Bullock
24
the head, to force it to let go. The head keeps its teeth
clamped tight on her wrist.
Finally, in desperation, the woman begins to smash the head
againstthe wall, over and over again, until it is battered and
5 bleeding. Its eyes glaze over, its jaws relax their grip and it
falls to the oor. Still enraged, the woman kicks it across the
room.Brought to hersenses by this pointless act of violence
thewomancovers her eyes with her hand for a moment: then
noticing her bleeding wrist, she goes into the bathroom,
10 washes off the blood and bandages her wrist.
She returns to the living-room with a towel and wraps it
round the head, which is now grey-faced and lifeless.
After some hesitation, she puts the wrapped-up head in the
trunk of the car and drives out into the country, where she
15
throwsit into amarsh, hoping that it will be left unmolested to
rotawayinpeace or at least only be nibbled at by water crea-
Discussion questions
Please answer the following questions in a separate le.
For each question, you should write at least three to four
complete sentences.
1.
in the rst 11 lines of the story. What effect do they
have on our initial understanding of the story?
2.
In your opinion, why doesn't it appear to be anything
special for the woman to nd her husband's head on
the doorstep?
tures.
When her lover comes to visit her that evening he nds the
door locked and the house in darkness, immersed in a deathly
20
Consider the useof active and passive-like structures
3.
How
4.
Try to characterize the husband who lost his body
silence.
[678]
would
you characterize the couple's
relationship before the events in the story took place?
(ie., hobbies, profession, personality, etc.)
5.
How do you interpret the last three lines of the story?
6.
Why do you think that the man loses everything
except his head?
2 clamped tight: festgeklammert; hier: festgebissen.
3 to smash: schlagen, schmettern.
4 battered: übel zugerichtet.
5 to glaze over: glasig, trüb werden (Augen).
14 trunk: Kofferraum (AE, CE).
15 marsh: Sump.
unmolested: unbelästigt, ungestört.
16 to nibble at s.th.: etwas beknabbern, an etwas knabbern, nas en.
19 immersed: eingetaucht, versunken.
7.
What's the author's message? Is there a message?