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Texts for
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Liceo Classico “Giulio Cesare” - Rimini
Prof. Fabio Pesaresi
2
Edmund Burke (1729–1797). On the Sublime and Beautiful.
Of the Passion Caused by the Sublime
THE PASSION caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is
astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some
degree of horror. 1 In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other,
nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of the sublime,
that, far from being produced by them, it anticipates our reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force.
Astonishment, as I have said, is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree; the inferior effects are
admiration, reverence, and respect.
NO passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. 1 For fear being an
apprehension of pain or death, it operates in a manner that resembles actual pain. Whatever therefore is
terrible, with regard to sight, is sublime too, whether this cause of terror be endued with greatness of
dimensions or not; for it is impossible to look on anything as trifling, or contemptible, that may be
dangerous. There are many animals, who though far from being large, are yet capable of raising ideas of the
sublime, because they are considered as objects of terror. As serpents and poisonous animals of almost all
kinds. And to things of great dimensions, if we annex an adventitious idea of terror, they become without
comparison greater. A level plain of a vast extent on land, is certainly no mean idea; the prospect of such a
plain may be as extensive as a prospect of the ocean: but can it ever fill the mind with anything so great as
the ocean itself? This is owing to several causes; but it is owing to none more than this, that the ocean is an
object of no small terror. [...]
TO make anything very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be necessary. When we know the full extent
of any danger, when we can accustom our eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension vanishes. Every one
will be sensible of this, who considers how greatly night adds to our dread, in all cases of danger, and how
much the notions of ghosts and goblins, of which none can form clear ideas, affect minds which give credit
to the popular tales concerning such sorts of beings. Those despotic governments, which are founded on the
passions of men, and principally upon the passion of fear, keep their chief as much as may be from the public
eye. The policy has been the same in many cases of religion. Almost all the heathen temples were dark. Even
in the barbarous temples of the Americans at this day, they keep their idol in a dark part of the hut, which is
consecrated to his worship. For this purpose too the Druids performed all their ceremonies in the bosom of
the darkest woods, and in the shade of the oldest and most spreading oaks.
3
William Wordsworth
Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1800)
[...] The principal object, then, proposed in these Poems was to choose incidents and situations from common
life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible in a selection of language really used
by men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary
things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect; and, further, and above all, to make these
incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of
our nature: chiefly, as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement. Humble
and rustic life was generally chosen, because, in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a
better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more
emphatic language; because in that condition of life our elementary feelings coexist in a state of greater
simplicity, and, consequently, may be more accurately contemplated, and more forcibly communicated;
because the manners of rural life germinate from those elementary feelings, and, from the necessary
character of rural occupations, are more easily comprehended, and are more durable; and, lastly, because in
that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature. The
language, too, of these men has been adopted (purified indeed from what appear to be its real defects, from
all lasting and rational causes of dislike or disgust) because such men hourly communicate with the best
objects from which the best part of language is originally derived; and because, from their rank in society
and the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse, being less under the influence of social vanity, they
convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions. Accordingly, such a language,
arising out of repeated experience and regular feelings, is a more permanent, and a far more philosophical
language, than that which is frequently substituted for it by Poets, who think that they are conferring honour
upon themselves and their art, in proportion as they separate themselves from the sympathies of men, and
indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish food for fickle tastes, and fickle
appetites, of their own creation. [...]
Taking up the subject, then, upon general grounds, let me ask, what is meant by the word Poet? What is a
Poet? to whom does he address himself? and what language is to be expected from him?—He is a man
speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness,
who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be
common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than
other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as
manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find
them. to these qualities he has added a disposition to be affected more than other men by absent things as if
they were present; an ability of conjuring up in himself passions, which are indeed far from being the same
as those produced by real events, yet (especially in those parts of the general sympathy which are pleasing
and delightful) do more nearly resemble the passions produced by real events, than anything which, from the
motions of their own minds merely, other men are accustomed to feel in themselves:— whence, and from
practice, he has acquired a greater readiness and power in expressing what he thinks and feels, and especially
those thoughts and feelings which, by his own choice, or from the structure of his own mind, arise in him
without immediate external excitement. [...]
I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion
recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually
disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually
produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition generally begins,
and in a mood similar to this it is carried on; but the emotion, of whatever kind, and in whatever degree, from
various causes, is qualified by various pleasures, so that in describing any passions whatsoever, which are
voluntarily described, the mind will, upon the whole, be in a state of enjoyment. If Nature be thus cautious to
preserve in a state of enjoyment a being so employed, the Poet ought to profit by the lesson held forth to him,
and ought especially to take care, that, whatever passions he communicates to his Reader, those passions, if
his Reader’s mind be sound and vigorous, should always be accompanied with an overbalance of
pleasure. [...]
4
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Biographia Literaria (1817)
[...] The IMAGINATION then, I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary IMAGINATION I
hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of
the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary Imagination I consider as an echo of the
former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency,
and differing only in degree, and in the mode of operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to
recreate; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealise and unify.
It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead.
FANCY, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with, but fixities and definites. The Fancy is indeed
no other than a mode of Memory emancipated from the order of time and space; while it is blended with, and
modified by that empirical phenomenon of the will, which we express by the word CHOICE. But equally
with the ordinary memory the Fancy must receive all its materials ready made from the law of association.
[...]
During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversations turned frequently on the
two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the
truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination. The
sudden charm, which accidents of light and shade, which moon-light or sun-set diffused over a known and
familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability of combining both. These are the poetry of nature.
The thought suggested itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might be composed of
two sorts. In the one, the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence
aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions as would
naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every
human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural
agency. For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the characters and incidents were
to be such, as will be found in every village and its vicinity, where there is a meditative and feeling mind to
seek after them, or to notice them, when they present themselves.
In this idea originated the plan of the 'Lyrical Ballads'; in which it was agreed, that my endeavours should be
directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward
nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that
willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth on the other
hand was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to
excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of
custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure,
but for which in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude we have eyes, yet see not, ears
that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.
5
William Wordsworth
My Heart Leaps Up
My heart leaps up when I behold*
vedo
A rainbow in the sky.
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
5
So be it* when I grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
England, 1802
MILTON! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
O raise us up, return to us again,
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power!
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.
sia
6
S.T. Coleridge
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Argument
How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the South
Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific
Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came
back to his own Country.
FIRST PART
An ancient Mariner meeteth three
gallants bidden to a wedding feast,
and detaineth one
PRIMA PARTE
Un vecchio marinaio incontra tre
giovani invitati a nozze e ne
trattiene uno.
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
«By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?
È un vecchio marinaio,
e ferma uno dei tre.
«Per la tua lunga barba grigia e il tuo occhio
scintillante, / perché mai mi fermi?
The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin ;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May’st hear the merry din.»
Le porte dello Sposo son aperte,
e io sono parente stretto;
i convitati son riuniti, il banchetto è servito,
puoi udirne l’allegro rumore.»
He holds him with his skinny hand,
«There was a ship,» quoth he.
«Hold off ! unhand me, grey-beard loon !»
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.
Egli lo trattiene con mano scheletrica.
«C’era una volta una nave…» dice. / «Lasciami
andare, vecchio pazzo dalla barba brizzolata!» / E
quello immediatamente ritirò la sua mano.
The Wedding-Guest is spell-bound by
the eye of the old seafaring man, and
constrained to hear his tale.
Il convitato è ammaliato/
dall’occhio del vecchio marinaio, e
costretto ad ascoltare il suo racconto.
He holds him with his glittering eye—
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years’ child:
The Mariner hath his will.
Ma con l’occhio scintillante lo attrae e lo trattiene.
E il Convitato resta come paralizzato, e sta ad
ascoltare come un bambino di tre anni: il vecchio
Marinaio è padrone di lui.
The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:
He cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner
Il Convitato si mise a sedere sopra una pietra: e non
può fare a meno di ascoltare attentamente. E cosí
parlò allora quel vecchio uomo, il Marinaio dal
magnetico sguardo:
«The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the light-house top.
«La nave fu salutata, il porto lasciato, e lietamente
filammo sotto la chiesa, sotto la collina, sotto l’alto
fanale.
The Mariner tells how the ship sailed
southward with a good wind and fair
weather, till it reached the Line.
Il marinaio racconta di come la nave
viaggiò verso sud con buon vento e
bel tempo fino all’Equatore.
7
The Sun came upon the left,
Out of the sea came he!
And the shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.
Il Sole si levava da sinistra,
si levava su dal mare.
Brillava magnificamente, e a destra
ridiscendeva nel mare
Higher and higher every day,
Till over the mast at noon—»
The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,
For he heard the loud bassoon.
Ogni dì piú alto, sempre più alto finchè diritto
sull’albero maestro, a mezzogiorno …»
Il Convitato si batte il petto impaziente, perchè
sente risuonare il forte fagotto.
The Wedding-Guest heareth the bridal
music; but the Mariner continueth his
tale.
Il convitato sente la musica nuziale;
ma il marinaio prosegue il suo
racconto.
The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she;
Nodding their heads before her goes
The merry minstrelsy.
La Sposa si è avanzata nella sala: essa è vermiglia
come una rosa; la precedono, movendo in cadenza
la testa, i lieti musicanti.
The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,
Yet he cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on the ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner,
Il Convitato si percuote il petto, ma non può fare a
meno di stare a udire il racconto. E così seguitò a
dire quell’antico uomo, il Marinaio dall’occhio
brillante.
The ship drawn by a storm toward the
South Pole.
La nave è spinta da una tempesta
verso il Polo Sud.
«And now the storm-blast came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:
He struck with his o’ertaking wings,
And chased us south along.
«Ed ecco che sopraggiunse la burrasca, e fu
tirannica e forte. Ci colpì con le sue irresistibili ali,
e, insistente, ci cacciò verso sud.
With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe,
And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
And southward aye we fled.
Ad alberi piegati, a bassa prora, come chi ha
inseguito con urli e colpi pur corre a capo chino
sull’orma del suo nemico, la nave correva veloce, la
tempesta ruggiva forte, e ci s’inoltrava sempre piú
verso il sud.
And now there come both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.
Poi vennero insieme la nebbia e la neve; si fece un
freddo terribile: blocchi di ghiaccio, alti come
l’albero della nave, ci galleggiavano attorno, verdi
come smeraldo.
The land of ice, and of fearful sounds,
where no living thing was to be seen.
La terra di ghiaccio e rumori spaventosi dove non si vedeva essere vivente.
And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken—
The ice was all between.
E traverso il turbine delle valanghe, le rupi nevose
mandavano sinistri bagliori: non si vedeva più
forma o di bestia — ghiaccio solo da per tutto.
The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around :
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!
Il ghiaccio era qui, il ghiaccio era là, il ghiaccio era
tutto all’intorno: scricchiolava e muggiva, ruggiva
ed urlava. come i rumori che si odono in una
sincope.
8
Till a great sea-bird, called the
Albatross, came through the snow-fog,
and was received with great joy and
hospitality.
Finché un grande uccello di mare,
chiamato Albatross, venne attraverso la
nebbia nevosa, e fu ricevuto con grande
gioia e ospitalità.
At lenght did cross an Albatross,
Thorough the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God’s name.
Alla fine un Albatro ci incrociò, e venne a noi
traverso la nebbia. Come se fosse stato un’anima
cristiana, lo salutammo nel nome di Dio.
It hate the food in ne’er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steered us through!
Mangiò cibo che non aveva mai mangiato; e ci
volava e rivolava d’intorno. Il ghiaccio a un tratto si
ruppe, e il pilota potè passare fra mezzo.
Ed ecco, l’Albatro si rivela uccello di
buon auspicio, e segue la nave mentre
torna verso nord fra la nebbia e il
ghiaccio fluttuante.
And lo! the Albatross proveth a bird of
good omen, and followeth the ship as it
returned northward through fog and
floating ice.
And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariners’ hollo!
E un buon vento di sud ci soffiò alle spalle, e
l’Albatro ci teneva dietro; e ogni giorno veniva a
mangiare o scherzare sul bastimento, chiamato e
salutato allegramente dai marinari.
In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;
Whiles all the night, through the fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white moon-shine.»
Tra la nebbia o tra ’l nuvolo, su l’albero o su le
vele, si appollaiò per nove sere di seguito; mentre
tutta la notte attraverso un bianco vapore splendeva
il bianco lume di luna.»
The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth
the pious bird of good omen.
«God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!—
Why look’st thou so?» —With my cross-bow
I shot the ALBATROSS
Il vecchio Marinaio, contro le leggi
dell’ospitalità, uccide il pio uccello di
buon augurio.
«Che Dio ti salvi, o Marinaio, dal demonio che ti
tormenta! — Perchè mi guardi cosí, Che cos’hai?»
— «Con la mia balestra, io ammazzai l’ ALBATRO!
SECOND PART
The sun now rose upon the right:
Out of the sea came he.
Still hid in mist and on the left
Went down into the sea.
Il sole ora si levava da destra: si levava dal mare,
circonfuso e quasi nascosto fra la nebbia, e si
rituffava nel mare a sinistra.
And the good south wind still blew behind,
But no sweet bird did follow,
Nor any day for food or play
Came to the mariners’ hollo!
E il buon vento di sud spirava ancora dietro a noi,
ma nessun vago uccella lo seguiva, e in nessun
giorno riapparve per cibo o per trastullo al grido dei
marinari.
His shipmates cry out against the
ancient Mariner for killing the bird of
good luck.
I compagni imprecano contro il vecchio
marinaio perché ha ucciso l’uccello di
buon augurio.
9
And I had done a hellish thing,
And it would work ’em woe:
For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze so blow.
Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay,
That made the breeze to blow!
But when the fog cleared off, they
justify the same, and thus make
themselves accomplices in the crime.
Nor dim nor red, like God’s own head,
The glorious Sun uprist:
Then all averred, I had killed the bird
That brought the fog and mist.
’Twas right, said they, such birds to slay,
That bring the fog and mist.
The fair breeze continues; the ship
enters the Pacific Ocean, and sails
northward, even till it reaches the
Line.
The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew
The furrow followed free;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.
The ship hath been suddenly
becalmed.
Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down
’Twas sad as sad could be;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!
E io avevo commesso un’azione infernale, e doveva
portare a tutti disgrazia; perché, tutti lo affermavano,
io avevo ucciso l’uccello che faceva soffiare la
brezza. Ah, disgraziato, dicevano, ha ammazzato
l’uccello che faceva spirare il buon vento.
Ma quando la nebbia si dirada lo
giustificano, e si rendono così complici del
misfatto.
Nè fosco nè rosso, ma sfolgorante come la faccia di
Dio, si levò il sole gloriosamente. Allora tutti
asserirono che io avevo ucciso l’uccello che portava
i vapori e le nebbie. È bene, dissero, è bene
ammazzare simili uccelli, che apportano i vapori e le
nebbie.
La buona brezza continua, la nave entra
nell’Oceano Pacifico e veleggia verso
nord fino a raggiungere l’Equatore.
La buona brezza soffiava, la bianca spuma scorreva,
il solco era libero: eravamo i primi che comparissero
in quel mare silenzioso…
La nave è fermata improvvisamente dalla
bonaccia.
Il vento cessò, e cadder le vele; fu una desolazione
ineffabile: si parlava soltanto per rompere il silenzio
del mare.
All in hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.
Solitario in un soffocante cielo di rame, il sole
sanguigno, non più grande della luna, si vedeva a
mezzogiorno pender diritto sull’albero maestro.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Per giorni e giorni di seguito, restammo come
impietriti, non un alito, non un moto; inerti come
una nave dipinta sopra un oceano dipinto.
And the Albatross begins to be
avenged.
E l’Albatro comincia ad essere vendicato.
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
Acqua, acqua da tutte le parti; e l’intavolato della
nave si contraeva per l’eccessivo calore; acqua,
acqua da tutte le parti; e non una goccia da bere!
The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yes, slimy things did crawl with legs
Il mare stesso si putrefaceva. O Cristo! che ciò
potesse davvero accadere? Sì; delle cose viscose
strisciavano trascinandosi su le gambe sopra un
10
Upon the slimy sea.
mare viscido.
About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch’s oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white.
Attorno, attorno, turbinosi, innumerevoli fuochi fatui
danzavano la notte: l’acqua, come l’olio nella
caldaia d’una strega, bolliva verde, blu, bianca.
A Spirit had followed them; one of the
invisible inhabitants of this planet,
neither departed souls nor angels;
concerning whom the learned Jew,
Josephus, and the Platonic
Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus,
may be consulted. They are very
numerous, and there is no climate or
element without one or more.
Uno Spirito li aveva seguiti; uno degli
invisibili abitatori di questo pianeta, non
anime di trapassati né angeli; sui quali si
possono consultare il dotto ebreo,
Giuseppe, e il Platonico di Costantinopoli,
Michele Psello. Sono molto numerosi, e non
c’è clima o elemento che non ne contenga
uno o più.
And some in dreams assured were
Of the spirit that plagued us so;
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
from the land of mist and snow.
E alcuni, in sogno, ebbero conferma dello spirito che
ci colpiva così: a nove braccia di profondità, ci
aveva seguiti dalla regione della nebbia e della neve.
And every tongue, through utter drought,
Was withered at the root;
We could not speak, no more than if
We had been chocked with soot.
E ogni lingua, per l’estrema sete, era seccata fino
alla radice; non si poteva più articolare parola, quasi
fossimo soffocati dalla fuliggine.
The shipmates in their sore distress,
would fain throw the whole guilt on
the ancient Mariner: in sign whereof
they hang the dead sea-bird round his
neck.
Ah! well a day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.
I compagni nella loro angoscia vorrebbero
gettare tutta la colpa sul vecchio marinaio;
in segno di ciò gli appendono al collo
l’uccello di mare morto.
Ohimè! che sguardi terribili mi gettavano, giovani e
vecchi! In luogo di croce, mi fu appeso al collo
l’Albatro che avevo ucciso.
THIRD PART
There passed a weary time. Each throat
Was parched, and glazed each eye
A weary time! A weary time!
How glazed each weary eye!
When looking westward I beheld
A something in the sky.
The ancient Mariner beholdeth a sign
in the element afar off.
At first it seemed a little speck,
And then it seemed a mist;
It moved and moved, and took at last
A certain shape, I wist.
E passò un triste tempo. Ogni gola era riarsa, ogni
occhio era vitreo. Un triste tempo, un triste tempo! E
come mi fissavano tutti quegli occhi stanchi!
Quand’ecco, guardando verso occidente, io scorsi
qualche cosa nel cielo.
Il vecchio marinaio vede un segno nel cielo
lontano.
Dapprima pareva una piccola macchia, una specie di
nebbia; si moveva, si moveva, e alla fine parve
prendere una certa forma.
11
A speck, a mist, a shape. I wist!
And still it neared and neared:
As if it dodged a water sprite,
It plunged and tacked and veered.
At its nearer approach, it seemeth him
to be a ship; and at a dear ransom he
freeth his speech from the bonds of
thirst.
With throats unslaked, with black lips backed,
We could nor laugh nor wail;
Through utter drought all dumb we stood!
I bit my arm, I sucked the blood,
And cried, A sail! a sail!
A flash of joy;
With throats unslaked, with black lips backed,
Agape they heard me call:
Gramercy! they for joy did grin,
And all at once their breath drew in,
As they were drinking all.
and horror follows. For can it be a
ship that comes onward without wind
or tide?
Una macchia, una nebbia, una forma, che sempre
più si faceva vicina: e come se volesse sottrarsi ed
evitare un fantasma marino, si tuffava, si piegava, si
rigirava.
Mentre si avvicina, gli pare una nave; e a
caro prezzo scioglie la lingua dai ceppi
della sete.
Con gole asciutte, con nere arse labbra, non si
poteva nè ridere nè piangere. In quell’eccesso di
sete, stavano tutti muti. Io mi morsi un braccio, ne
succhiai il sangue, e gridai: Una vela! Una vela!
Un lampo di gioia;
Con arse gole, con nere labbra bruciate, a bocca a
perta mi udiron gridare. “Sia lode al cielo!”.
Risero convulsamente di gioia: e tutti insieme
aspirarono l’aria, come in atto di bere.
e segue l’orrore. Perché, può essere una nave che arriva
senza vento o corrente?
See! see! (I cried) she tacks no more!
Hither to work us weal;
Without a breeze, without a tide,
She steadies with upright keel!
Vedete! vedete! (io gridai) essa non gira più, ma
vien dritta a recarci salute: senza un alito di vento,
senza corrente, si avanza con la chiglia elevata.
The western wave was all a-flame,
The day was well nigh done!
Almost upon the western wave
Rested the broad bright Sun.
When that strange shape drove suddenly
Betwixt us and the Sun.
A occidente l’acqua era tutta fiammeggiante; il
giorno era presso a finire. Sull’onda occidentale
posava il grande splendido sole, quand’ecco quella
strana forma s’interpose fra il sole e noi.
It seemeth him but the skeleton of a
ship.
And straight the Sun was flecked with bars,
(Heaven’s Mother send us grace!)
As if through a dungeon-grate he peered
With broad and burning face.
And its ribs are seen as bars on the
face of the setting Sun.
Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud)
How fast she nears and nears!
Are those her sails that glance in the Sun,
Like restless gossameres?
Gli pare non sia altro che lo scheletro di
una nave.
E a un tratto il sole apparve listato di strisce (che la
celeste Madre ci assista!) come se guardasse dalla
inferriata di una prigione con la sua faccia larga ed
accesa.
I suoi fianchi si vedono come barre sulla
faccia del sole calante.
Ahimè! (pensavo io, e il cuore mi batteva forte),
come si avvicina rapidamente, ogni momento di più!
Son quelle le sue vele, che scintillano al sole come
irrequiete fila di ragno?
12
The Spectre-Woman and her Deathmate, and no other on board the
skeleton ship.
Are those her ribs through which the Sun
Did peer, as through a grate?
And is that Woman all her crew?
Is that a DEATH? and are there two?
Is DEATH that Woman’s mate?
Like vessel, like crew!
Her lips were red, her looks were free.
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,
Who thicks man’s blood with cold.
Death and Life-in-Death have diced
for the ship's crew, and she (the
latter) winneth the ancient Mariner.
The naked hulk alongside came,
And the twain were casting dice:
«The game is done! I’ve won, I’ve won !»
Quoth she, and whistles thrice.
No twilight within the courts of the
Sun.
La donna-spettro e il suo compagno Morte,
e nessun altro a bordo delle nave fantasma.
Son quelle le sue coste, traverso a cui il sole guarda
come traverso a una grata? E quella donna là è tutto
l’equipaggio? È forse la Morte? o ve ne son due? o è
la Morte la compagna di quella donna?
Tale il vascello, tale l’equipaggio!
Le sue labbra eran rosse, franchi gli sguardi, i capelli
gialli com’oro: ma la pelle biancastra come la
lebbra… Essa era l’Incubo VITA-IN-MORTE, che
congela il sangue dell’uomo.
Morte e Vita-in-Morte hanno giocato ai
dadi l’equipaggio e lei (la seconda) vince il
vecchio marinaio.
Quella nuda carcassa di nave ci passò di fianco, e le
due giocavano ai dadi. «Il gioco è finito! ho vinto,
ho vinto!» dice l’una, e fischia tre volte.
Nessun crepuscolo intorno al sole.
The Sun’s rim dips, the stars rush out:
At one stride comes the dark;
With far-heard whisper o’er the sea,
Off shot the spectre-bark
L’ultimo lembo di sole scompare: le stelle accorrono
a un tratto: senza intervallo crepuscolare, è già notte.
Con un mormorio prolungato fuggì via sul mare quel
battello-fantasma.
We listened and looked sideways up!
Fear at my heart, as at a cup,
My life-blood seemed to sip!
The stars were dim, and thick the night,
The steersman’s face by his lamp gleamed white;
Noi udivamo, e guardavamo di sbieco, in su. Il
terrore pareva suggere dal mio cuore, come da una
coppa, tutto il mio sangue vitale. Le stelle erano
torbide, fitta la notte, e il viso del timoniere
splendeva pallido e bianco sotto la sua lanterna.
At the rising of the Moon,
From the sails the dew did drip—
Till clomb above the eastern bar
The horned Moon, with one bright star
Within the neither tip.
One after another,
One after one, by the star-dogged Moon,
Too quick for groan or sigh,
Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,
And cursed me withe his eye.
His shipmates drop down dead.
Allo spuntar della luna,
La rugiada gocciava dalle vele; finchè il corno
lunare pervenne alla linea orientale, avendo alla sua
estremità inferiore una fulgida stella,
uno dopo l’altro,
Un dopo l’altro, al lume della luna inseguita dalle
stelle, senza aver tempo di mandare un gemito o un
sospiro, ogni marinaio torse la faccia in un orribile
spasimo, e mi maledisse con gli occhi.
i suoi compagni cadono, morti.
13
Four times fifty living men,
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan)
With heavy tump, a lifeless lump,
They dropped down one by one.
Duecento uomini viventi (e io non udii nè un sospiro
nè un gemito), con un grave tonfo, come una inerte
massa, caddero giù l’un dopo l’altro.
But Life-in-Death begins her work on
the ancient Mariner.
Ma Vita-in-Morte comincia la sua opera sul
vecchio marinaio.
Le anime volaron via dai loro corpi — volarono alla
beatitudine o alla dannazione; ed ogni anima mi
passò d’accanto sibilando, come il fischio della mia
balestra.
The souls did from their bodies fly,—
They flied to bliss or woe!
And every soul it passed me by
Like the whizz of my cross-bow.
FOURTH PART
The Wedding-Guest feareth that a
spirit is talking to him;
«I fear thee, ancient Mariner,
I fear thy skinny hand !
And thou art long, and lank, and brown,
As is the ribbed sea-sand,
But the ancient Mariner assureth him
of his bodily life, and proceedeth to
relate his horrible penance.
Il convitato teme che a parlargli sia uno
spirito;
«Tu mi spaventi, vecchio Marinaio! La tua scarna
mano mi fa paura! Tu sei lungo, magro, bruno come
la ruvida sabbia del mare.
ma il vecchio marinaio lo rassicura di
essere un corpo vivente, e continua il
racconto della sua orribile espiazione.
I fear thee and thy glittering eye
And thy skinny hand, so brown.» —
«Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest!
This body dropt not down.
Ho paura di te, e del tuo occhio brillante, e della tua
bruna mano di scheletro…»— «Non temere, non
temere, o Convitato! Questo mio corpo non cadde
fra i morti.
Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide, wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.
Solo, solo, tutto solo — solo in un immenso mare! E
nessun santo ebbe compassione di me, della mia
anima agonizzante.
He despiseth the creatures of the
calm.
The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.
And envieth that they should live, and
so many lie dead.
Egli disprezza le creature della bonaccia,
Tutti quegli uomini così belli, tutti ora giacevano
morti! e migliaia e migliaia di creature brulicanti e
viscose continuavano a vivere, e così io.
ed invidia che esse vivano, e così tanti
giacciano morti.
I looked upon the rotting sea,
And drew my eyes away;
I looked upon the rotting deck
And there the dead men lay.
Guardavo quel putrido mare, e torcevo subito gli
occhi dall’orribile vista; guardavo sul ponte marcito,
e là erano distesi i morti.
I looked to heaven, and tried to pray;
But or ever a prayer had gusht,
Alzai gli occhi al cielo, e tentai di pregare; ma
appena mormoravo una prece, udivo quel maledetto
14
A wicked whisper came, and made
My heart as dry as dust.
sibilo, e il mio cuore diventava arido come la
polvere.
I closed my lids, and kept them close,
And the balls like pulses beat;
For the sky and the sea and the sea and the sky
Lay like a load on my weary eye,
And the dead were at my feet.
Chiusi le palpebre, e le mantenni chiuse; e le pupille
battevano come polsi; perchè il mare ed il cielo, il
cielo ed il mare, pesavano opprimenti sui miei
stanchi occhi; e ai miei piedi stavano i morti.
But the curse liveth for him in the eye
of the dead men.
Ma la maledizione vive per lui nell’occhio
dei morti.
The cold sweat melted from their limbs,
Nor rot nor reek did they:
The look with which they looked on me
Had never passed away.
Un sudore freddo stillava dalle loro membra, ma non
imputridivano, nè puzzavano: mi guardavano
sempre fissi, col medesimo sguardo con cui mi
guardaron da vivi.
An orphan’s curse would drag to Hell
A spirit from on high;
But oh! more horrible than that
Is a curse in a dead man’s eye!
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die.
La maledizione di un orfano avrebbe la forza di tirar
giù un’anima dal cielo all’inferno; ma oh! più
orribile ancora è la maledizione negli occhi di un
morto! Per sette giorni e sette notti io vidi quella
maledizione, eppure non potevo morire.
In his loneliness and fixedness he
yearneth towards the journeying
Moon, and the stars that still sojourn,
yet still move onward; and
everywhere the blue sky belongs to
them, and is their appointed rest and
their native country and their own
natural homes, which they enter
unannounced, as lords that are
certainly expected, and yet there is a
silent joy at their arrival.
Nella sua solitudine ed immobilità egli si
strugge per la luna che viaggia nel cielo e le
stelle che sempre stanno e pur sempre si
muovono e dovunque l’azzurro del cielo
appartiene loro ed è il luogo destinato al
loro riposo, patria loro e loro naturale
dimora, nella quale entrano senz’essere
annunziate come signori sicuramente attesi,
al cui arrivo nasce però una gioia
silenziosa.
The moving Moon went up the sky,
And no where did abide:
Softly she was going up,
And a star or two beside—
La vagante luna ascendeva in cielo e non si fermava
mai: dolcemente saliva , saliva in compagnia di una
o due stelle.
Her beams bemocked the sultry main,
Like April hoar-frost spread;
But where the ship’s huge shadow lay,
The charmed water burnt alway
A still and awful red.
I suoi raggi irridevano il mare afoso come
primaverile brina sparsa; ma dove si rifletteva la
grande ombra della nave, l’acqua incantata ardeva in
un monotono e orribile color rosso.
By the light of the Moon he beholdeth
God's creatures of the great calm.
Alla luce della luna egli osserva le creature
divine della grande bonaccia.
Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watched the water-snakes:
They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.
Oltre l’ombra della nave, io guardavo i serpenti
marini muoversi a gruppi di un lucente candore; e
quando si alzavano a fior d’acqua, la magica luce si
rifrangeva in candidi fiocchi spioventi.
Within the shadow of the ship,
Nell’ombra della nave, guardavo ammirando la
15
I watched their rich attire:
Blue glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.
riccheza dei loro colori; blu, verde-lucidi, nerovellutati, si attorcigliavano e nuotavano; e ovunque
movessero, era uno scintillio di fuochi d’oro.
Their beauty and their happiness. He
blesseth them in his heart.
O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.
Loro bellezza e felicità. Egli le benedice in
cuor suo.
O felici creature viventi! Nessuna lingua può
esprimere la loro bellezza: e una sorgente d’amore
scaturì dal mio cuore, e istintivamente li benedissi.
Certo il mio buon Santo ebbe allora pietà di me, e io
inconsciamente li benedissi.
L’incantesimo comincia a sciogliersi.
The spell begins to break.
Nel momento stesso potei pregare; e allora l’Albatro
si staccò dal mio collo, e cadde, e affondò come
piombo nel mare.
The self same moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.
SEVENTH PART
[...]
I moved my lips — the Pilot shrieked
And fell down in a fit;
The holy Hermit raised his eyes,
And prayed where he did sit.
Quando io mossi le labbra per parlare, il pilota
mandò un grido, e cadde svenuto, Il buon eremita
levò gli occhi al cielo, e si mise a pregare.
I took the oars: the Pilot’s boy,
Who now doth crazy go,
Laughed loud and long, and all the while
His eyes went to and fro,
«Ha! ha!» quoth he, «full plain I see
The Devil knows how to row.»
Io afferrai i remi. Il ragazzo del pilota, che ora è
diventato pazzo, rideva forte e a lungo, girando gli
occhi di qua e di là. «Ah! ah! (diceva) mi accorgo
ora che il Diavolo ha imparato a remare.»
And now, all in my own countree,
I stood on the firm land!
The Hermith stepped forth from the boat,
And scarcely he could stand.
Ed ecco io misi piede sulla terra ferma, nel mio
paese nativo. L’eremita uscì con me dal battello, ma
poteva reggersi appena.
The ancient Mariner earnestly
entreateth the Hermit to shrieve him;
and the penance of life falls on him.
«Oh shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!»
«The Hermit crossed his brow.
«Say quick» quoth he, «I bid thee say»
What manner of man art thou?»
Il vecchio marinaio supplica con fervore
l’Eremita di confessarlo; e cade su di lui la
penitenza che durerà per tutta la vita.
«Oh confessami, sant’uomo, confessami!» —
L’eremita aggrottò il sopracciglio. «Dimmi subito,
t’impongo di dirlo, che razza d’uomo sei tu?»
16
Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched
With a woful agony,
Which forced me to begin my tale;
And then it left me free.
And ever and anon throughout his
future life an agony constraineth him
to travel from land to land;
Ed immediatamente questa mia persona fu torturata
in una tremenda agonia che mi obbligò a raccontar
la mia storia; e solamente dopo averla narrata, mi
sentii sollevato.
Di tanto in tanto nella sua vita futura
un’agonia lo costringerà a viaggiare di
terra in terra
Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns:
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.
Fin d’allora, a un’epoca indeterminata, riprovo
quell’agonia; e finchè non ho rifatto lo spaventoso
racconto, il cuore mi brucia nel petto.
I pass, like night, from land to land;
I have strange power of speech;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach.
Io passo, come la notte, di terra in terra, e ho una
strana facoltà di parola. Appena lo vedo in viso,
riconosco subito l’uomo destinato ad udirmi; e gli
comincio a dire la mia storia.
What loud uproar bursts from that door!
The wedding guests are there:
But in the garden bower the bride
And bride-maids singing are:
And hark the little vesper bell,
Which biddeth me to prayer!
Che alto strepito esce da quella porta! I Convitati
sono tutti là: la sposa e le sue damigelle son nel
giardino e si odon cantare
Ma ecco la campanella del vespro che invita me alla
preghiera.
O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been
Alone on a wide wide sea:
so lonely ’twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.
O Convitato! Quest’anima si è trovata sola
sull’ampio, ampio mare: tanto sola, che Dio stesso
pareva appena esser là.
O sweeter than the marriage-feast,
’Tis sweeter far to me,
To walk together to the kirk
With a goodly company!—
Oh, più dolce del nuziale festino, molto più dolce
per me, è l’avviarmi alla chiesa, in devota
compagnia.
To walk together to the kirk,
And all together pray.
Whiel each to his great Father bends,
Old men, and babes, and loving friends,
And youths and maidens gay!
Incamminarmi alla chiesa, e là pregar tutti insieme,
mentre ognun s’inchina al gran Padre, vecchi,
bambini, teneri amici, e giovani, e allegre fanciulle.
And to teach, by his own example,
love and reverence to all things that
God made and loveth.
e ad insegnare col suo esempio amore e
rispetto per tutte le cose che Dio ha fatto ed
ama.
Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest,
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
Addio, addio! Ma questo io dico a te, o Convitato:
prega bene sol chi ben ama e gli uomini e gli uccelli
e le bestie.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us
He made and loveth all.»
Prega bene colui che meglio ama tutte le creature,
piccole e grandi; poichè il buon Dio che ci ama, ha
fatto e ama tutti.
17
The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest
Turned from the bridgeroom’s door.
Il marinaio dall’occhio brillante, dalla barba brinata
dagli anni, è sparito — e ora il Convitato non si
dirige più alla porta dello sposo.
He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.
Egli se ne andò, come stordito, e fuori dai sensi. E
quando si levò la mattina dopo, era un uomo più
triste e più saggio.
18
Lord George G. Byron
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
(from Childe Harold, Canto iv, Verse 178)
John Keats
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly* states and kingdoms seen;
bello, di buona qualita
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
5
Oft* of one wide expanse had I been told
spesso
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne*;
dominio
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
10
When a new planet swims into his ken*;
portata, vista
Or like stout* Cortez when with eagle eyes
forte, gagliardo
He stared at the Pacific - and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise* Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
sorpresa
19
Charles Dickens
Hard Times
Plot Overview
THOMAS GRADGRIND, A WEALTHY, RETIRED
MERCHANT in the industrial city of Coketown,
England, devotes his life to a philosophy of
rationalism, self-interest, and fact. He raises his
oldest children, Louisa and Tom, according to
this philosophy and never allows them to
engage in fanciful or imaginative pursuits. He
founds a school and charitably takes in one of
the students, the kindly and imaginative Sissy
Jupe, after the disappearance of her father, a
circus entertainer.
As the Gradgrind children grow older, Tom
becomes a dissipated, self-interested hedonist,
and Louisa struggles with deep inner confusion,
feeling as though she is missing something
important in her life. Eventually Louisa marries
Gradgrind’s friend Josiah Bounderby, a wealthy
factory owner and banker more than twice her
age. Bounderby continually trumpets his role as
a self-made man who was abandoned in the
gutter by his mother as an infant. Tom is
apprenticed at the Bounderby bank, and Sissy
remains at the Gradgrind home to care for the
younger children.
In the meantime, an impoverished “Hand”—
Dickens’s term for the lowest laborers in
Coketown’s factories—named Stephen
Blackpool struggles with his love for Rachael,
another poor factory worker. He is unable to
marry her because he is already married to a
horrible, drunken woman who disappears for
months and even years at a time. Stephen visits
Bounderby to ask about a divorce but learns
that only the wealthy can obtain them. Outside
Bounderby’s home, he meets Mrs. Pegler, a
strange old woman with an inexplicable
devotion to Bounderby.
James Harthouse, a wealthy young sophisticate
from London, arrives in Coketown to begin a
political career as a disciple of Gradgrind, who
is now a Member of Parliament. He
immediately takes an interest in Louisa and
decides to try to seduce her. With the unspoken
aid of Mrs. Sparsit, a former aristocrat who has
fallen on hard times and now works for
Bounderby, he sets about trying to corrupt
Louisa.
The Hands, exhorted by a crooked union
spokesman named Slackbridge, try to form a
union. Only Stephen refuses to join because he
feels that a union strike would only increase
tensions between employers and employees. He
is cast out by the other Hands and fired by
Bounderby when he refuses to spy on them.
Louisa, impressed with Stephen’s integrity,
visits him before he leaves Coketown and helps
him with some money. Tom accompanies her
and tells Stephen that if he waits outside the
bank for several consecutive nights, help will
come to him. Stephen does so, but no help
arrives. Eventually he packs up and leaves
Coketown, hoping to find agricultural work in
the country. Not long after that, the bank is
robbed, and the lone suspect is Stephen, the
vanished Hand who was seen loitering outside
the bank for several nights just before
disappearing from the city.
Mrs. Sparsit witnesses Harthouse declaring his
love for Louisa, and Louisa agrees to meet him
in Coketown later that night. However, Louisa
instead flees to her father’s house, where she
miserably confides to Gradgrind that her
upbringing has left her married to a man she
does not love, disconnected from her feelings,
deeply unhappy, and possibly in love with
Harthouse. She collapses to the floor, and
Gradgrind, struck dumb with self-reproach,
begins to realize the imperfections in his
philosophy of rational self-interest.
Sissy, who loves Louisa deeply, visits Harthouse
and convinces him to leave Coketown forever.
Bounderby, furious that his wife has left him,
redoubles his efforts to capture Stephen. When
Stephen tries to return to clear his good name,
he falls into a mining pit called Old Hell Shaft.
Rachael and Louisa discover him, but he dies
soon after an emotional farewell to Rachael.
Gradgrind and Louisa realize that Tom is really
responsible for robbing the bank, and they
arrange to sneak him out of England with the
help of the circus performers with whom Sissy
spent her early childhood. They are nearly
successful, but are stopped by Bitzer, a young
man who went to Gradgrind’s school and who
embodies all the qualities of the detached
rationalism that Gradgrind once espoused, but
who now sees its limits. Sleary, the lisping
circus proprietor, arranges for Tom to slip out
of Bitzer’s grasp, and the young robber escapes
from England after all.
Mrs. Sparsit, anxious to help Bounderby find
the robbers, drags Mrs. Pegler—a known
associate of Stephen Blackpool—in to see
Bounderby, thinking Mrs. Pegler is a potential
witness. Bounderby recoils, and it is revealed
20
that Mrs. Pegler is really his loving mother,
whom he has forbidden to visit him: Bounderby
is not a self-made man after all. Angrily,
Bounderby fires Mrs. Sparsit and sends her
away to her hostile relatives. Five years later, he
will die alone in the streets of Coketown.
Gradgrind gives up his philosophy of fact and
devotes his political power to helping the poor.
Tom realizes the error of his ways but dies
without ever seeing his family again. While
Sissy marries and has a large and loving family,
Louisa never again marries and never has
children. Nevertheless, Louisa is loved by
Sissy’s family and learns at last how to feel
sympathy for her fellow human beings.
Book I, Chapter 1: THE ONE THING NEEDFUL
“NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts.
Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything
else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing
else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I
bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these
children. Stick to Facts, sir!”
The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom, and the
speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring
every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve. The emphasis was
helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows
for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves,
overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s
mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the
speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was
helped by the speaker’s hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a
plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with
knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouseroom for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker’s obstinate carriage,
square coat, square legs, square shoulders, — nay, his very neckcloth,
trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a
stubborn fact, as it was, — all helped the emphasis.
“In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!”
The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all
backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels
then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts
poured into them until they were full to the brim.
Book I, Chapter 5: - THE KEYNOTE
COKETOWN, to which Messrs. Bounderby and Gradgrind now walked,
was a triumph of fact; it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs.
Gradgrind herself. Let us strike the key-note*, Coketown, before pursuing
our tune.
It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke
21
and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural
red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery
and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed
themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal
in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of
building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day
long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up
and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It
contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small
streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one
another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound
upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day
was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart
of the last and the next.
These attributes of Coketown were in the main inseparable from the work
by which it was sustained; against them were to be set off, comforts of life
which found their way all over the world, and elegancies of life which
made, we will not ask how much of the fine lady, who could scarcely bear to
hear the place mentioned. The rest of its features were voluntary, and they
were these.
You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful. If the
members of a religious persuasion built a chapel there - as the members of
eighteen religious persuasions had done - they made it a pious warehouse
of red brick, with sometimes (but this is only in highly ornamental
examples) a bell in a birdcage on the top of it. The solitary exception was
the New Church; a stuccoed edifice with a square steeple over the door,
terminating in four short pinnacles like florid wooden legs. All the public
inscriptions in the town were painted alike, in severe characters of black
and white. The jail might have been the infirmary, the infirmary might
have been the jail, the town-hall might have been either, or both, or
anything else, for anything that appeared to the contrary in the graces of
their construction. Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the material aspect of the
town; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the immaterial. The M'Choakumchild
school was all fact, and the school of design was all fact, and the relations
between master and man were all fact, and everything was fact between the
lying-in hospital and the cemetery, and what you couldn't state in figures,
or show to be purchaseable in the cheapest market and saleable in the
22
dearest, was not, and never should be, world without end, Amen.
A town so sacred to fact, and so triumphant in its assertion, of course got
on well? Why no, not quite well. No? Dear me!
Bleak House
Chapter 1 — In Chancery
LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable
November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the
earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an
elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle,
with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the
death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers.
Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foothold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since
the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those
points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.
Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where
it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the
Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on
the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats.
Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in
the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly
pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges
peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon,
and hanging in the misty clouds.
23
Elizabeth Gaskell
Mary Barton (1848)
[...] they arrived in Berry Street. It was unpaved: and down the middle a gutter forced its way, every
now and then forming pools in the holes with which the street abounded. Never was the old Edinburgh
cry of ‘Gardez l'eau!’ more necessary than in this street. As they passed, women from their doors tossed
household slops of every description into the gutter; they ran into the next pool, which overflowed and
stagnated. Heaps of ashes were the stepping-stones, on which the passer-by, who cared in the least for
cleanliness, took care not to put his foot.
Our friends were not dainty, but even they picked their way, till they got to some steps leading down to
a small area, where a person standing would have his head about one foot below the level of the street,
and might at the same time, without the least motion of his body, touch the window of the cellar and the
damp muddy wall right opposite.
You went down one step even from the foul area into the cellar in which a family of human beings
lived. It was very dark inside. The window-panes, many of them, were broken and stuffed with rags,
which was reason enough for the dusky light that pervaded the place even at midday. After the account I
have given of the state of the street, no one can be surprised that on going into the cellar inhabited by
Davenport, the smell was so foetid as almost to knock the two men down. Quickly recovering
themselves, as those inured to such things do, they began to penetrate the thick darkness of the place,
and to see three or four little children rolling on the damp, nay wet brick floor, through which the
stagnant, filthy moisture of the street oozed up; the fire-place was empty and black; the wife sat on her
husband's lair, and cried in the dark loneliness. (Chapter 6, "Poverty and Death," Mary Barton)
24
Robert Browning
"My Last Duchess"
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
5
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Fra Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
10
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
15
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much," or "Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat": such stuff
20
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart---how shall I say?---too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
25
Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace---all and each
30
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,---good! but thanked
Somehow---I know not how---as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
35
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
25
In speech---(which I have not)---to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark"---and if she let
40
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
---E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
45
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
50
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
55
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
26
UNRELIABLE NARRATOR: An unreliable narrator is a
storyteller who "misses the point" of the events or things
he describes in a story, who plainly misinterprets the
motives or actions of characters, or who fails to see the
connections between events in the story. The author
himself, of course, must plainly understand the
connections, because he presents the material to the
readers in such a way that readers can see what the
narrator overlooks. This device is sometimes used for
purposes of irony or humor.
Barry Lyndon
by William Makepeace Thackeray
I presume that there is no gentleman in Europe
would defy the most obstinate to disbelieve her.
that has not heard of the house of Barry of
(…)
Barryogue, of the kingdom of Ireland, than which
a more famous name is not to be found in Gwillim
or D'Hozier; and though, as a man of the world, I
have learned to despise heartily the claims of
some PRETENDERS to high birth who have no
more genealogy than the lacquey who cleans my
boots, and though I laugh to utter scorn the
boasting of many of my countrymen, who are all
for descending from kings of Ireland, and talk of a
domain no bigger than would feed a pig as if it
were a principality; yet truth compels me to assert
that my family was the noblest of the island, and,
perhaps, of the universal world (...) I would
assume the Irish crown over my coat−of−arms,
but that there are so many silly pretenders to that
distinction who bear it and render it common. (…)
In fact, my mother had great gifts in every way,
and believed herself to be one of the most
beautiful,
When we left Castle Brady we came to occupy a
house in Brady's town, which mamma christened
Barryville. I confess it was but a small place, but,
indeed, we made the most of it. I have mentioned
the family pedigree which hung up in the
drawingroom, which mamma called the yellow
saloon, and my bedroom was called the pink
bedroom, and hers the orange tawny apartment
(how well I remember them all!); and at
dinner−time Tim regularly rang a great bell, and
we each had a silver tankard to drink from, and
mother boasted with justice that I had as good a
bottle of claret by my side as any squire of the
land. So indeed I had, but I was not, of course,
allowed at my tender years to drink any of the
wine; which thus attained a considerable age,
even in the decanter.
Uncle Brady (in spite of the family quarrel) found
out the above fact one day by calling at Barryville
accomplished, and meritorious persons in the
at dinner−time, and unluckily tasting the liquor.
world. Often and often has she talked to me and
You should have seen how he sputtered and made
the neighbours regarding her own humility and
faces! But the honest gentleman was not
piety, pointing them out in such a way that I
particular about his wine, or the company in
which he drank it. (…)
27
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
"Pied Beauty" (1877)
Glory be to God for dappled things-For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
5
Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
10
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise Him.
"God's Grandeur" (1877)
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
5
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
10
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
28
The Windhover
To Christ Our Lord
I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird — the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
"Carrion Comfort" (1885-7)
Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist--slack they may be--these last strands of man
In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
5
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruised bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?
Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
10
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, cheer.
Cheer whom though? The hero whose heaven-handling flung me, foot trod
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.
29
Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Plot
IN THE STATELY LONDON HOME of his aunt, Lady
Brandon, the well-known artist Basil Hallward
meets Dorian Gray. Dorian is a cultured, wealthy,
and impossibly beautiful young man who
immediately captures Basil’s artistic imagination.
Dorian sits for several portraits, and Basil often
depicts him as an ancient Greek hero or a
mythological figure. When the novel opens, the
artist is completing his first portrait of Dorian as
he truly is, but, as he admits to his friend Lord
Henry Wotton, the painting disappoints him
because it reveals too much of his feeling for his
subject. Lord Henry, a famous wit who enjoys
scandalizing his friends by celebrating youth,
beauty, and the selfish pursuit of pleasure,
disagrees, claiming that the portrait is Basil’s
masterpiece. Dorian arrives at the studio, and
Basil reluctantly introduces him to Lord Henry,
who he fears will have a damaging influence on
the impressionable, young Dorian.
Basil’s fears are well founded; before the end of
their first conversation, Lord Henry upsets Dorian
with a speech about the transient nature of beauty
and youth. Worried that these, his most
impressive characteristics, are fading day by day,
Dorian curses his portrait, which he believes will
one day remind him of the beauty he will have
lost. In a fit of distress, he pledges his soul if only
the painting could bear the burden of age and
infamy, allowing him to stay forever young. In an
attempt to appease Dorian, Basil gives him the
portrait.
Over the next few weeks, Lord Henry’s influence
over Dorian grows stronger. The youth becomes a
disciple of the “new Hedonism” and proposes to
live a life dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure. He
falls in love with Sibyl Vane, a young actress who
performs in a theater in London’s slums. He
adores her acting; she, in turn, refers to him as
“Prince Charming” and refuses to heed the
warnings of her brother, James Vane, that Dorian
is no good for her. Overcome by her emotions for
Dorian, Sibyl decides that she can no longer act,
wondering how she can pretend to love on the
stage now that she has experienced the real thing.
Dorian, who loves Sibyl because of her ability to
act, cruelly breaks his engagement with her. After
doing so, he returns home to notice that his face in
Basil’s portrait of him has changed: it now sneers.
Frightened that his wish for his likeness in the
painting to bear the ill effects of his behavior has
come true and that his sins will be recorded on the
canvas, he resolves to make amends with Sibyl
the next day. The following afternoon, however,
Lord Henry brings news that Sibyl has killed
herself. At Lord Henry’s urging, Dorian decides
to consider her death a sort of artistic triumph—
she personified tragedy—and to put the
matter behind him. Meanwhile, Dorian hides his
portrait in a remote upper room of his house,
where no one other than he can watch its
transformation.
Lord Henry gives Dorian a book that describes the
wicked exploits of a nineteenth-century
Frenchman; it becomes Dorian’s bible as he sinks
ever deeper into a life of sin and corruption. He
lives a life devoted to garnering new experiences
and sensations with no regard for conventional
standards of morality or the consequences of his
actions. Eighteen years pass. Dorian’s reputation
suffers in circles of polite London society, where
rumors spread regarding his scandalous exploits.
His peers nevertheless continue to accept him
because he remains young and beautiful. The
figure in the painting, however, grows
increasingly wizened and hideous. On a dark,
foggy night, Basil Hallward arrives at Dorian’s
home to confront him about the rumors that
plague his reputation. The two argue, and Dorian
eventually offers Basil a look at his (Dorian’s)
soul. He shows Basil the now-hideous portrait,
and Hallward, horrified, begs him to repent.
Dorian claims it is too late for penance and kills
Basil in a fit of rage.
30
In order to dispose of the body, Dorian employs
the help of an estranged friend, a doctor, whom he
blackmails. The night after the murder, Dorian
makes his way to an opium den, where he
encounters James Vane, who attempts to avenge
Sibyl’s death. Dorian escapes to his country
estate. While entertaining guests, he notices James
Vane peering in through a window, and he
becomes wracked by fear and guilt. When a
hunting party accidentally shoots and kills Vane,
Dorian feels safe again. He resolves to amend his
life but cannot muster the courage to confess his
crimes, and the painting now reveals his supposed
desire to repent for what it is—hypocrisy. In a
fury, Dorian picks up the knife he used to stab
Basil Hallward and attempts to destroy the
painting. There is a crash, and his servants enter to
find the portrait, unharmed, showing Dorian Gray
as a beautiful young man. On the floor lies the
body of their master—an old man, horribly
wrinkled and disfigured, with a knife plunged into
his heart.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde
The Preface
The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's
aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his
impression of beautiful things.
The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who
find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a
fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these
there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or
badly written. That is all.
The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in
a glass.
The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his
own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the
artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.
No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist
has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable
mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.
Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to
the artist materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts
is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the
type. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at
their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that
31
art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is
new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The
only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.
Important Quotations Explained
1. We are punished for our refusals. Every
impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the
mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and
has done with its sin, for action is a mode of
purification. . . . Resist it, and your soul grows
sick with longing for the things it has forbidden
to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws
have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been
said that the great events of the world take place
in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain
only, that the great sins of the world take place
also.
Explanation for Quotation #1
glass with his pale, fine-pointed fingers.
“Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with
others. One’s own life—that is the important
thing. As for the lives of one’s neighbours, if one
wishes to be a prig or a Puritan, one can flaunt
one’s moral views about them, but they are not
one’s concern. Besides, Individualism has really
the higher aim. Modern morality consists in
accepting the standard of one’s age. I consider
that for any man of culture to accept the
standard of his age is a form of the grossest
immorality.”
Explanation for Quotation #2
As Dorian prepares, in Chapter Six, to escort Lord
Lord Henry begins his seduction of Dorian's mind with
Henry and Basil to the theater to see Sibyl Vane
perform, Lord Henry chastises Dorian for dismissing, in
these words in Chapter Two. Lord Henry advocates a
return to the “Hellenic ideal,” to the sensibilities of
the face of love, all of his “wrong, fascinating,
poisonous, delightful theories.” Here, Lord Henry
ancient Greece where the appreciation of beauty
reigned. He strikes a contrast between those glory days
expounds on the virtues of individualism, which dictate
that one develop according to one's own standards. His
and the present mode of living, which, he believes, is
marked by a morality that demands self-denial. The
outlook relies on Darwinism, a fashionable theory at the
time that asserted that an organism's development
outcome of denial, he goes on to say, is only a stronger
desire for that which has been denied. This passage is
would be altered or impaired if it were made to adjust to
the standards of another organism. Lord Henry fancies
a bold challenge to conventional and restrictive
Victorian morality; it dismisses the notion of sin as a
that he and Dorian are creatures that require different
standards than the masses in order to develop fully.
figment of the imagination. Interestingly, if sin is
relegated to the mind, as Lord Henry would have it,
Thus, he readily rejects modern morality, which governs
the many, in favor of a self-determined morality that
then it should follow that the body is free from the
effects of sin. According to this line of thinking, Dorian's
applies only to himself. Although far from a prig or a
Puritan, Lord Henry does spend an inordinate amount
tragedy, then, is that he is unable to purge his
“monstrous and unlawful” acts from his conscience.
of time worrying over Dorian's development. Contrary to
the principle of individualism he takes the time to relate,
One must remember, however, that Lord Henry has
failed to put his philosophy to the test. Although he is a
he not only does his best to insinuate himself between
Dorian and Sibyl, but he also takes up Dorian's proper
great advocate of sin, he is hardly a sinner, and his
understanding of the soul—sickened or otherwise—
social development as his pet cause.
never incorporates the knowledge that Dorian gradually
acquires.
2. “To be good is to be in harmony with one’s
self,” he replied, touching the thin stem of his
3. “[Y]ou poisoned me with a book once. I
should not forgive that. Harry, promise me that
you will never lend that book to anyone. It does
harm.”
“My dear boy, you are really beginning to
32
moralize. You will soon be going about like the
converted, and the revivalist, warning people
against all the sins of which you have grown
tired. You are much too delightful to do that....
As for being poisoned by a book, there is no
such thing as that. Art has no influence upon
action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is
superbly sterile. The books that the world calls
immoral are books that show the world its own
shame.”
Explanation for Quotation #3
This exchange between Dorian and Lord Henry
takes place in Chapter Nineteen, as Dorian,
flayed by his conscience, pledges to live a
reformed life. Reflecting on the course of his
past twenty years, he confronts Lord Henry,
whom he believes is responsible for leading him
astray. Dorian criticizes the yellow book that,
years before, had such a profound influence
over him, claiming that this book did him great
harm. This accusation is, of course, alien to
Wilde’s philosophy of aestheticism, which holds
that art cannot be either moral or immoral.
Lord Henry says as much, refusing to believe
that a book could have such power. While there
is something seductive in his observation that
“the world calls immoral . . . books that show
the world its own shame,” Lord Henry’s words
here are less convincing than other statements
to the same effect that he makes earlier in the
novel. In the latter stages of the novel, we know
of Dorian’s downfall, and we know that he is
anything but “delightful.” At this point, Lord
Henry’s praising of Dorian makes Lord Henry
seem hopelessly naïve, the victim of a
philosophy whose consequences elude him.
The Importance of Being Earnest
Plot
Jack Worthing, the play’s protagonist, is a pillar
of the community in Hertfordshire, where he is
guardian to Cecily Cardew, the pretty, eighteenyear-old granddaughter of the late Thomas
Cardew, who found and adopted Jack when he
was a baby. In Hertfordshire, Jack has
responsibilities: he is a major landowner and
justice of the peace, with tenants, farmers, and a
number of servants and other employees all
dependent on him. For years, he has also
pretended to have an irresponsible black-sheep
brother named Ernest who leads a scandalous
life in pursuit of pleasure and is always getting
into trouble of a sort that requires Jack to rush
grimly off to his assistance. In fact, Ernest is
merely Jack’s alibi, a phantom that allows him
to disappear for days at a time and do as he
likes. No one but Jack knows that he himself is
Ernest. Ernest is the name Jack goes by in
London, which is where he really goes on these
occasions—probably to pursue the very sort of
behavior he pretends to disapprove of in his
imaginary brother.
Jack is in love with Gwendolen Fairfax, the
cousin of his best friend, Algernon Moncrieff.
When the play opens, Algernon, who knows
Jack as Ernest, has begun to suspect something,
having found an inscription inside Jack’s
cigarette case addressed to “Uncle Jack” from
someone who refers to herself as “little Cecily.”
Algernon suspects that Jack may be leading a
double life, a practice he seems to regard as
commonplace and indispensable to modern life.
He calls a person who leads a double life a
“Bunburyist,” after a nonexistent friend he
pretends to have, a chronic invalid named
Bunbury, to whose deathbed he is forever being
summoned whenever he wants to get out of
some tiresome social obligation.
At the beginning of Act I, Jack drops in
unexpectedly on Algernon and announces that
he intends to propose to Gwendolen. Algernon
confronts him with the cigarette case and forces
him to come clean, demanding to know who
“Jack” and “Cecily” are. Jack confesses that his
name isn’t really Ernest and that Cecily is his
ward, a responsibility imposed on him by his
adoptive father’s will. Jack also tells Algernon
about his fictional brother. Jack says he’s been
thinking of killing off this fake brother, since
Cecily has been showing too active an interest in
him. Without meaning to, Jack describes Cecily
in terms that catch Algernon’s attention and
make him even more interested in her than he
is already.
Gwendolen and her mother, Lady Bracknell,
arrive, which gives Jack an opportunity to
propose to Gwendolen. Jack is delighted to
discover that Gwendolen returns his affections,
but he is alarmed to learn that Gwendolen is
fixated on the name Ernest, which she says
“inspires absolute confidence.” Gwendolen
makes clear that she would not consider
marrying a man who was not named Ernest.
33
Lady Bracknell interviews Jack to determine his
eligibility as a possible son-in-law, and during
this interview she asks about his family
background. When Jack explains that he has no
idea who his parents were and that he was
found, by the man who adopted him, in a
handbag in the cloakroom at Victoria Station,
Lady Bracknell is scandalized. She forbids the
match between Jack and Gwendolen and
sweeps out of the house.
In Act II, Algernon shows up at Jack’s country
estate posing as Jack’s brother Ernest.
Meanwhile, Jack, having decided that Ernest
has outlived his usefulness, arrives home in
deep mourning, full of a story about Ernest
having died suddenly in Paris. He is enraged to
find Algernon there masquerading as Ernest but
has to go along with the charade. If he doesn’t,
his own lies and deceptions will be revealed.
While Jack changes out of his mourning
clothes, Algernon, who has fallen hopelessly in
love with Cecily, asks her to marry him. He is
surprised to discover that Cecily already
considers that they are engaged, and he is
charmed when she reveals that her fascination
with “Uncle Jack’s brother” led her to invent an
elaborate romance between herself and him
several months ago. Algernon is less enchanted
to learn that part of Cecily’s interest in him
derives from the name Ernest, which,
unconsciously echoing Gwendolen, she says
“inspires absolute confidence.”
Algernon goes off in search of Dr. Chasuble, the
local rector, to see about getting himself
christened Ernest. Meanwhile, Gwendolen
arrives, having decided to pay Jack an
unexpected visit. Gwendolen is shown into the
garden, where Cecily orders tea and attempts to
play hostess. Cecily has no idea how Gwendolen
figures into Jack’s life, and Gwendolen, for her
part, has no idea who Cecily is. Gwendolen
initially thinks Cecily is a visitor to the Manor
House and is disconcerted to learn that Cecily is
“Mr. Worthing’s ward.” She notes that Ernest
has never mentioned having a ward, and Cecily
explains that it is not Ernest Worthing who is
her guardian but his brother Jack and, in fact,
that she is engaged to be married to Ernest
Worthing. Gwendolen points out that this is
impossible as she herself is engaged to Ernest
Worthing. The tea party degenerates into a war
of manners.
Jack and Algernon arrive toward the climax of
this confrontation, each having separately made
arrangements with Dr. Chasuble to be
christened Ernest later that day. Each of the
young ladies points out that the other has been
deceived: Cecily informs Gwendolen that her
fiancé is really named Jack and Gwendolen
informs Cecily that hers is really called
Algernon. The two women demand to know
where Jack’s brother Ernest is, since both of
them are engaged to be married to him. Jack is
forced to admit that he has no brother and that
Ernest is a complete fiction. Both women are
shocked and furious, and they retire to the
house arm in arm.
Act III takes place in the drawing room of the
Manor House, where Cecily and Gwendolen
have retired. When Jack and Algernon enter
from the garden, the two women confront them.
Cecily asks Algernon why he pretended to be
her guardian’s brother. Algernon tells her he
did it in order to meet her. Gwendolen asks
Jack whether he pretended to have a brother in
order to come into London to see her as often as
possible, and she interprets his evasive reply as
an affirmation. The women are somewhat
appeased but still concerned over the issue of
the name. However, when Jack and Algernon
tell Gwendolen and Cecily that they have both
made arrangements to be christened Ernest
that afternoon, all is forgiven and the two pairs
of lovers embrace. At this moment, Lady
Bracknell’s arrival is announced.
Lady Bracknell has followed Gwendolen from
London, having bribed Gwendolen’s maid to
reveal her destination. She demands to know
what is going on. Gwendolen again informs
Lady Bracknell of her engagement to Jack, and
Lady Bracknell reiterates that a union between
them is out of the question. Algernon tells Lady
Bracknell of his engagement to Cecily,
prompting her to inspect Cecily and inquire into
her social connections, which she does in a
routine and patronizing manner that infuriates
Jack. He replies to all her questions with a
mixture of civility and sarcasm, withholding
until the last possible moment the information
that Cecily is actually worth a great deal of
money and stands to inherit still more when she
comes of age. At this, Lady Bracknell becomes
genuinely interested.
Jack informs Lady Bracknell that, as Cecily’s
legal guardian, he refuses to give his consent to
her union with Algernon. Lady Bracknell
suggests that the two young people simply wait
until Cecily comes of age, and Jack points out
that under the terms of her grandfather’s will,
Cecily does not legally come of age until she is
thirty-five. Lady Bracknell asks Jack to
reconsider, and he points out that the matter is
entirely in her own hands. As soon as she
consents to his marriage to Gwendolen, Cecily
can have his consent to marry Algernon.
However, Lady Bracknell refuses to entertain
the notion. She and Gwendolen are on the point
of leaving when Dr. Chasuble arrives and
34
happens to mention Cecily’s governess, Miss
Prism. At this, Lady Bracknell starts and asks
that Miss Prism be sent for.
When the governess arrives and catches sight of
Lady Bracknell, she begins to look guilty and
furtive. Lady Bracknell accuses her of having
left her sister’s house twenty-eight years before
with a baby and never returned. She demands
to know where the baby is. Miss Prism
confesses she doesn’t know, explaining that she
lost the baby, having absentmindedly placed it
in a handbag in which she had meant to place
the manuscript for a novel she had written. Jack
asks what happened to the bag, and Miss Prism
says she left it in the cloakroom of a railway
station. Jack presses her for further details and
goes racing offstage, returning a few moments
of Being Earnest.”
later with a large handbag. When Miss Prism
confirms that the bag is hers, Jack throws
himself on her with a cry of “Mother!” It takes a
while before the situation is sorted out, but
before too long we understand that Jack is not
the illegitimate child of Miss Prism but the
legitimate child of Lady Bracknell’s sister and,
therefore, Algernon’s older brother.
Furthermore, Jack had been originally
christened “Ernest John.” All these years Jack
has unwittingly been telling the truth: Ernest is
his name, as is Jack, and he does have an
unprincipled younger brother—Algernon. Again
the couples embrace, Miss Prism and Dr.
Chasuble follow suit, and Jack acknowledges
that he now understands “the vital Importance
Important Quotations Explained
1. LADY BRACKNELL: “I do not approve of
anything that tampers with natural ignorance.
Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it
and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of
modern education is radically unsound.
Fortunately in England, at any rate, education
produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would
prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and
probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor
Square.”
Explanation for Quotation #1
Lady Bracknell says these lines in the scene in
Act I in which she interviews Jack to determine
his eligibility as a suitor for Gwendolen. She has
just told him she believes that a man who wants
to marry should know either everything or
nothing, and Jack, sensing a trap, has said he
knows nothing. Lady Bracknell greets the news
with complacency and says only, “I am pleased
to hear it.” Wilde is on one level sending up the
boorish ignorance and vacuity of the British
leisured classes, qualities he had certainly
encountered in the person of Lord Alfred
Douglas’s voluble and undereducated father,
whose provocative, misspelled note would
ultimately lead to Wilde’s downfall. On another
level, Wilde is making a serious social and
political point. A good deal of truth exists in
what Lady Bracknell says. Education, if it were
effective in England, probably would threaten
the established order. Lady Bracknell is
implying that if the poor and the downtrodden
in England knew anything about anything they
would overthrow the ruling class.
The speech exemplifies one of the ways in which
Wilde’s comedy works. The characters in The
Importance of Being Earnest are not realistic
or true to life. They don’t display consistency of
temperament or viewpoint, even within a given
scene or speech. They’re literary constructs,
artificial creations whose purpose is to give
voice to a particular utterance at a particular
moment. Wilde uses Lady Bracknell to embody
the mind-boggling stupidity of the British
aristocracy, while at the same time, he allows
her to voice some of the most trenchant
observations in the play.
2. JACK: “You don’t think there is any chance
of Gwendolen becoming like her mother in
about a hundred and fifty years, do you, Algy?”
ALGERNON: “All women become like their
mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does.
That’s his.”
JACK: “Is that clever?”
ALGERNON: “It is perfectly phrased! and quite
as true as any observation in civilized life
should be.”
Explanation for Quotation #2
This exchange between Algernon and Jack in
Act I occurs after Lady Bracknell has swept
indignantly out of the house in response to
Jack’s inability to produce any ancestry. In
some ways it foreshadows the future, since
Gwendolen really does resemble her mother in
a number of ways. Like Lady Bracknell, she is
somewhat ruthless and overbearing, and she
35
demonstrates similar habits of speech and
frames of mind, including a propensity to
monomania (witness her obsession with the
name “Ernest”) and a tendency to make absurd
categorical pronouncements. If Gwendolen’s
voice were turned up a few decibels, it might be
indistinguishable from that of Lady Bracknell.
Algernon’s reply to Jack’s question is a perfect
example of the Wildean epigram: a statement
that briefly and elegantly turns some piece of
received or conventional wisdom on its head.
Another example is Algernon’s assertion that
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Modern life would be very tedious if it were
either, and modern literature a complete
impossibility!” Typically, the Wildean epigram
consists of two elements: an outrageous
statement followed by an explanation that is at
once even more outrageous and at the same
time true. Or, as in the quotation above, it can
consist of an antithesis: “On the one hand A; on
the other hand B.” When Algernon tells Jack his
witticism is “perfectly phrased” and “quite as
true as any observation in civilized life should
be,” he is voicing the moral perspective of the
Wildean dandy, who believes that nothing is
more important than the beauty of form and
that elegance rather than accuracy or truth
should dictate what people say.
3. ALGERNON: “Oh! I am not really wicked at
all, cousin Cecily. You mustn’t think that I am
wicked.”
CECILY: “If you are not, then you have
certainly been deceiving us all in a very
inexcusable manner. I hope you have not been
leading a double life, pretending to be wicked
and being really good all the time. That would
be hypocrisy.”
Explanation for Quotation #3
This exchange between Algernon and Cecily
occurs in Act II when Algernon, who is
presenting himself as Jack’s brother Ernest, is
shown into the garden. He greets Cecily, calling
her his “little cousin,” and she greets him as
“my wicked cousin Ernest.” The moral status of
Jack’s fictional brother has undergone a change
between Acts I and II. At Algernon’s flat in Half
Moon Street, “Ernest” was merely “profligate”
(Algernon’s word). To use Jack’s terminology,
he got into “scrapes,” which is to say “jams” or
mischief. Precisely what Jack considers a
“scrape” isn’t made clear in Act I. They are,
however, something Algernon is fond of. When
Jack warns him that Bunbury may get him into
“a serious scrape some day,” Algernon replies,
“I love scrapes. They are the only things that are
never serious.”
Once the action moves to the garden of the
Manor House, where Miss Prism’s moral
viewpoint seems to hold sway, Jack’s brother
graduates to “unfortunate,” “bad,” and
downright “wicked.” Cecily yearns to meet a
“really wicked” person, she says. The moment
before Algernon enters, she soliloquizes that
she’s terrified “he will look just like everyone
else.”
This open interest in the idea of immorality is
what takes Cecily out of the realm of Victorian
hypocrisy and makes her a suitable love interest
for Algernon. Her notion that if Jack’s brother
is not really wicked he has been “deceiving us
all in a very inexcusable manner” turns the plot
of the play on its head. She goes on to define
hypocrisy as “pretending to be wicked and
being really good all the time.” It isn’t, of
course. It is the opposite of hypocrisy. In fact, it
is the creed of the Wildean dandy-hero.
4. LADY BRACKNELL: “My nephew, you seem to
be displaying signs of triviality.”
JACK: “On the contrary, Aunt Augusta, I’ve
now realized for the first time in my life the vital
Importance of Being Earnest.”
Explanation for Quotation #4
These lines form the last exchange in the play.
At this point in the play, the notion of
earnestness has taken several forms.
Earnestness is a concept that can be best
grasped by looking at its opposites. Here it is
presented as the opposite of “triviality,” while
elsewhere it means the opposite of seriousness.
When Jack scoffs at the idea of a “serious
Bunburyist,” Algernon retorts, “Well, one must
be serious about something . . . . What on earth
you are serious about I haven’t got the remotest
idea. About everything, I should fancy. You
have such an absolutely trivial nature.” In terms
of the play’s primary plot, earnestness is the
quality of honesty or candor. But exactly what
the play really says about this attribute is hard
to determine. Algernon professes not to believe
that truth belongs in civilized conversation.
Jack doesn’t think truth “quite the sort of thing
one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl.” Cecily
thinks that “whenever one has anything
unpleasant to say, one should always be quite
candid.” Lady Bracknell believes that a woman
should always lie about her age. Gwendolen
feels that “In matters of grave importance, style,
not sincerity, is the vital thing.” Of course,
which of these characters is speaking the truth
about the truth is impossible to determine.
36
One of the moral paradoxes that The
Importance of Being Earnest seems intended to
express is the idea that the perfectly moral man
is the man who professes to be immoral, who
speaks truly by virtue of the fact that he admits
to being essentially a liar. Wilde set great store
in lying, which, he argued in a quasi-Platonic
dialogue called “The Decay of Lying,” is a
veritable art form. Art itself may really be
what’s at stake here. From Wilde’s standpoint,
the poseur is to be congratulated and
commended if his affectations bespeak elegance
and style and achieve beauty. If they do, he is
close to an artist. If they don’t, he is only a
hypocrite.
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Kim (1901)
Summary
Kim is Rudyard Kipling’s most enduringly
successful serious novel. It was published in
1901 and is the story of the orphaned son of a
soldier in the Irish regiment. His full name is
Kimball O’Hara, but he is known, as the title
suggests, as Kim. The novel takes place in India,
then a British colony, and Kim spends his
childhood as a waif in Lahore where he meets a
Tibetan ‘lama’ or holy man who is on a quest to
find a mystical river. Kim joins him on his
journey, but meets his father’s old regiment. He
is adopted by them and is sent to a school
although in his holidays he continues with his
wandering. Partly as a result of his spirited
lifestyle, Kim is selected by Colonel Creighton of
the Ethnological Survey who notices his
promise as a secret agent for the British. Under
the instruction of the Indian, Hurree Babu, he
becomes a distinguished member of the secret
service, getting hold of the papers of some
Russian spies in the Himalayas. The novel is
notable for its detailed portrait of Indian life, its
religions and some of the humbler aspects of a
land with a great population and associated
problems. Some of Kipling’s jingoism does show
through in the latter stages of the novel,
however, but this does not detract much from
what is a highly successful study of life in India
and of a boy who combines both Oriental and
Irish and therefore East and West in his nature.
Kim at an Indian railway station
THEY entered the fort-like raIlway station, black in the end of night; the electrics sizzling over the goods
yard where they handle the heavy Northern grain-traffic.
“This is the work of devils!” said the lama, recoiling from the hollow echoing darkness, the glimmer of rails
between the masonry platforms, and the maze of girders above. He stood in a gigantic stone hall paved, it
seemed, with the sheeted dead— third-class passengers who had taken their tickets overnight and were
sleeping in the waiting-rooms. All hours of the twenty-four are alike to Orientals, and their passenger traffic
is regulated accordingly.
“This is where the fire-carriages come. One stands behind that hole”— Kim pointed to the ticket-office—
“who will give thee a paper to take thee to Umballa.
“But we go to Benares,” he replied petulantly.
“All one. Benares then. Quick: she comes!”
“Take thou the purse.”
The lama, not so well used to trains as he had pretended, started as the 3.25 a.m. south bound roared in. The
sleepers sprang to life, and the station filled with clamour and shoutings, cries of water and sweetmeat
vendors, shouts of native policemen, and shrill yells of women gathering up their baskets, their families, and
their husbands.
“It is the train— only the te-rain. It will come here. Wait!” Amazed at the lama’s immense simplicity (he had
handed him a small bag full of rupees), Kim asked and paid for a ticket to Umballa. A sleepy clerk grunted
37
and flung out a ticket to the next station, just six miles distant.
“Nay,” said Kim, scanning it with a grin. “This may serve for farmers, but I live in the city of Lahore. It was
cleverly done, babu. Now give the ticket to Umballa.”
The babu scowled and dealt the proper ticket.
“Now another to Amritzar,” said Kim, who had no notion of spending Mahbub Ali’s money on anything so
crude as a paid ride to Umballa. “The price is so much. The small money in return is just so much. I know
the ways of the te-rain.... Never did yogi need chela as thou dost,” he went on merrily to the bewildered
lama. “They would have flung thee out at Mian Mir but for me. This way! Come.” He returned the money,
keeping only one anna in each rupee of the price of the Umballa ticket as his commission— the immemorial
commission of Asia.
The lama jibbed at the open door of a crowded third-class carriage. “Were it not better to walk?” said he
weakly.
Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness
Plot Overview
HEART OF DARKNESS centers around Marlow, an
introspective sailor, and his journey up the
Congo River to meet Kurtz, reputed to be an
idealistic man of great abilities. Marlow tells his
tale to a group of men on the boat Nellie that is
waiting for the tide on the river Thames,
remarking at the very beginning of the book
“And this also … has been one of the
dark places of the earth.”
Then he starts his narrative.
Marlow takes a job as a riverboat captain with
the Company, a Belgian concern organized to
trade in the Congo. As he travels to Africa and
then up the Congo, Marlow encounters
widespread inefficiency and brutality in the
Company’s stations. Before getting to his
destination, he sees a French ship shooting
towards the jungle, with no apparent reason.
When he arrives at the Company’s station, he
finds it in a terrible state of disrepair: he sees
piles of decaying machinery and a cliff being
blasted for no apparent purpose. He also
understands that the native inhabitants of the
region have been forced into the Company’s
service, and they suffer terribly from overwork
and ill treatment at the hands of the Company’s
agents. He sees a group of black prisoners
walking along in chains under the guard of
another black man, who wears a shoddy
uniform and carries a rifle. He remarks that he
had already known the “devils” of violence,
greed, and desire, but that in Africa he became
acquainted with the “flabby, pretending, weakeyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly.”
Marlow also comes to a grove of trees and, to
his horror, finds a group of dying native
laborers. He offers a biscuit to one of them;
seeing a bit of white European yarn tied around
his neck, he wonders at its meaning. The cruelty
and squalor of imperial enterprise contrasts
sharply with the impassive and majestic jungle
that surrounds the white man’s settlements,
making them appear to be tiny islands amidst a
vast darkness.
The general manager of the Central Station is
an unwholesome, conspiratorial character.
Marlow finds that his steamship has been sunk
and spends several months waiting for parts to
repair it. At the station, Marlow meets also a
nattily dressed white man, the Company’s chief
accountant. In his spotless white suit and
perfectly tidy office, the man makes a sharp
contrast with the derelict state of the station. He
discloses to Marlow his eagerness to keep up
appearances and look as he would at home. Like
everything else Marlow encounters, the chief
accountant’s surface may conceal a dark secret,
in this case the native woman whom he has
38
“taught”—perhaps violently and despite her
“distaste for the work”—to care for his linens.
Marlow spends ten days here waiting for a
caravan to the next station. One day, the chief
accountant tells him that in the interior he will
undoubtedly meet Mr. Kurtz, a first-class agent
who sends in as much ivory as all the others put
together and is destined for
advancement. Marlow grows an interest in
Kurtz: the manager and his favorite, the
brickmaker, seem to fear Kurtz as a threat to
their position. Kurtz is rumored to be ill,
making the delays in repairing the ship all the
more costly.
Marlow eventually gets the parts he needs to
repair his ship, and he and the manager set out
with a few agents (whom Marlow calls pilgrims
because of their strange habit of carrying long,
wooden staves wherever they go) and a crew of
cannibals on a long, difficult voyage up the
river. The dense jungle and the oppressive
silence make everyone aboard a little jumpy,
and the occasional glimpse of a native village or
the sound of drums work the pilgrims into a
frenzy.
“Going up that river was like travelling
back to the earliest beginnings of the
world.”
On the ship, Marlow gets to know and
appreciate his mariners, a group of native
“cannibals”, who surprise him for their good
manners and behaviour.
The earth seemed unearthly… and the
men were – No, they were not inhuman.
Well, you know, that was the worst of it
– their suspicion of their not being
inhuman. They howled and leaped, and
spun, and made horrid faces; but what
thrilled you was just the thought of their
humanity – like yours – the thought of
your remote kinship with this wild and
passionate uproar.
Marlow and his crew come across a hut with
stacked firewood, together with a note saying
that the wood is for them but that they should
approach cautiously.
Shortly after the steamer has taken on the
firewood, it is surrounded by a dense fog which
conceals an unseen band of natives on the shore
of the river.
The head of the native mariners speaks to
Marlow:
“Give ‘im to us.” “To you, eh? I asked;
“What would you do with them?” “Eat
‘im!” he said curtly […] I would no doubt
have been properly horrified, had it not
occurred to me that he and his chaps
must be very hungry. […]
Why in the name of all the gnawing
devils of hunger they didn’t go for us –
they were thirty to five – and have a
good tuck in for once, amazes me now
when I think of it. […] And I saw that
something restraining, one of those
human secrets that baffle probability,
had come into play there. […] then I
perceived – in a new light, as it were –
how unwholesome the pilgrims looked,
and I hoped, yes, I positively hoped, that
my aspect was not so – what shall I say
– so – unappetising.
When the fog clears, the ship is attacked by the
natives, who fire arrows from the safety of the
forest. The African helmsman is killed before
Marlow frightens the natives away with the
ship’s steam whistle. Not long after, Marlow
and his companions arrive at Kurtz’s Inner
Station, expecting to find him dead, but a halfcrazed Russian trader, who meets them as they
come ashore, assures them that everything is
fine and informs them that he is the one who
left the wood. The Russian claims that Kurtz
has enlarged his mind and cannot be subjected
to the same moral judgments as normal people.
Apparently, Kurtz has established himself as a
god with the natives and has gone on brutal
raids in the surrounding territory in search of
ivory. The collection of severed heads adorning
the fence posts around the station attests to his
“methods.” The pilgrims bring Kurtz out of the
station-house on a stretcher, and a large group
of native warriors pours out of the forest and
39
surrounds them. Kurtz speaks to them, and the
natives disappear into the woods.
The manager brings Kurtz, who is quite ill,
aboard the steamer. A beautiful native woman,
apparently Kurtz’s mistress, appears on the
shore and stares out at the ship. The Russian
implies that she is somehow involved with
Kurtz and has caused trouble before through
her influence over him. The Russian reveals to
Marlow, after swearing him to secrecy, that
Kurtz had ordered the attack on the steamer to
make them believe he was dead in order that
they might turn back and leave him to his plans.
The Russian then leaves by canoe, fearing the
displeasure of the manager. Kurtz disappears in
the night, and Marlow goes out in search of
him, finding him crawling on all fours toward
the native camp. Marlow stops him and
convinces him to return to the ship. They set off
down the river the next morning, but Kurtz’s
health is failing fast.
Marlow listens to Kurtz talk while he pilots the
ship, and Kurtz entrusts Marlow with a packet
of personal documents, including an eloquent
pamphlet on civilizing the savages written for
the International Society for the Suppression of
Savage Customs which ends with a scrawled
message that says, “Exterminate all the brutes!”
The steamer breaks down, and they have to stop
for repairs. Kurtz dies, uttering his last words—
“The horror! The horror!”—in the presence of
the confused Marlow. Marlow falls ill soon after
and barely survives. Eventually he returns to
Europe and goes to see Kurtz’s Intended (his
fiancée). She is still in mourning, even though it
has been over a year since Kurtz’s death, and
she praises him as a paragon of virtue and
achievement. She asks what his last words were,
but Marlow cannot bring himself to shatter her
illusions with the truth. Instead, he tells her
that Kurtz’s last word was her name.
The narrator concludes the novella with a
consideration on the Thames:
The offing was barred by a black bank of
clouds, and the tranquil waterway
leading to the utmost ends of the earth
flowed sombre under an overcast sky –
seemed to lead into the heart of an
immense darkness.
The miracle (Chapter 1)
"I didn't want any more loitering in the shade, and I made haste towards the station. When near the buildings
I met a white man, in such an unexpected elegance of get-up that in the first moment I took him for a sort of
vision. I saw a high starched collar, white cuffs, a light alpaca jacket, snowy trousers, a clear necktie, and
varnished boots. No hat. Hair parted, brushed, oiled, under a green-lined parasol held in a big white hand. He
was amazing, and had a penholder behind his ear.
"I shook hands with this miracle, and I learned he was the Company's chief accountant, and that all the
bookkeeping was done at this station. He had come out for a moment, he said, 'to get a breath of fresh air.'
The expression sounded wonderfully odd, with its suggestion of sedentary desk-life. I wouldn't have
mentioned the fellow to you at all, only it was from his lips that I first heard the name of the man who is so
indissolubly connected with the memories of that time. Moreover, I respected the fellow. Yes; I respected his
collars, his vast cuffs, his brushed hair. His appearance was certainly that of a hairdresser's dummy; but in
the great demoralization of the land he kept up his appearance. That's backbone. His starched collars and gotup shirt-fronts were achievements of character. He had been out nearly three years; and, later on, I could not
help asking him how he managed to sport such linen. He had just the faintest blush, and said modestly, 'I've
been teaching one of the native women about the station. It was difficult. She had a distaste for the work.'
This man had verily accomplished something. And he was devoted to his books, which were in apple-pie
order.
"Everything else in the station was in a muddle,—heads, things, buildings. Strings of dusty niggers with
splay feet arrived and departed; a stream of manufactured goods, rubbishy cottons, beads, and brass-wire set
into the depths of darkness, and in return came a precious trickle of ivory.
"I had to wait in the station for ten days—an eternity. I lived in a hut in the yard, but to be out of the chaos I
would sometimes get into the accountant's office. It was built of horizontal planks, and so badly put together
40
that, as he bent over his high desk, he was barred from neck to heels with narrow strips of sunlight. There
was no need to open the big shutter to see. It was hot there too; big flies buzzed fiendishly, and did not sting,
but stabbed. I sat generally on the floor, while, of faultless appearance (and even slightly scented), perching
on a high stool, he wrote, he wrote. Sometimes he stood up for exercise. When a truckle-bed with a sick man
(some invalided agent from up-country) was put in there, he exhibited a gentle annoyance. 'The groans of
this sick person,' he said, 'distract my attention. And without that it is extremely difficult to guard against
clerical errors in this climate.'
"One day he remarked, without lifting his head, 'In the interior you will no doubt meet Mr. Kurtz.' On my
asking who Mr. Kurtz was, he said he was a first-class agent; and seeing my disappointment at this
information, he added slowly, laying down his pen, 'He is a very remarkable person.' Further questions
elicited from him that Mr. Kurtz was at present in charge of a trading post, a very important one, in the true
ivory-country, at 'the very bottom of there. Sends in as much ivory as all the others put together. . . .' He
began to write again. The sick man was too ill to groan. The flies buzzed in a great peace.”
He was hollow at the core… (Chapter 3)
I directed my glass to the house. There were no signs of life, but there was the ruined roof, the long mud wall
peeping above the grass, with three little square window-holes, no two of the same size; all this brought
within reach of my hand, as it were. And then I made a brusque movement, and one of the remaining posts of
that vanished fence leaped up in the field of my glass. You remember I told you I had been struck at the
distance by certain attempts at ornamentation, rather remarkable in the ruinous aspect of the place. Now I
had suddenly a nearer view, and its first result was to make me throw my head back as if before a blow. Then
I went carefully from post to post with my glass, and I saw my mistake. These round knobs were not
ornamental but symbolic; they were expressive and puzzling, striking and disturbing-- food for thought and
also for the vultures if there had been any looking down from the sky; but at all events for such ants as were
industrious enough to ascend the pole. They would have been even more impressive, those heads on the
stakes, if their faces had not been turned to the house. Only one, the first I had made out, was facing my way.
I was not so shocked as you may think. The start back I had given was really nothing but a movement of
surprise. I had expected to see a knob of wood there, you know. I returned deliberately to the first I had seen-and there it was, black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids,--a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that
pole, and, with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth, was smiling too, smiling
continuously at some endless and jocose dream of that eternal slumber.
"I am not disclosing any trade secrets. In fact the manager said afterwards that Mr. Kurtz's methods had
ruined the district. I have no opinion on that point, but I want you clearly to understand that there was
nothing exactly profitable in these heads being there. They only showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the
gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him-- some small matter which, when
the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this
deficiency himself I can't say. I think the knowledge came to him at last--only at the very last. But the
wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I
think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no
conception till he took counsel with this great solitude--and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It
echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core. . . . I put down the glass, and the head that had
appeared near enough to be spoken to seemed at once to have leaped away from me into inaccessible
distance.
"The admirer of Mr. Kurtz was a bit crestfallen. In a hurried, indistinct voice he began to assure me he had
not dared to take these--say, symbols--down. He was not afraid of the natives; they would not stir till Mr.
Kurtz gave the word. His ascendency was extraordinary. The camps of these people surrounded the place,
and the chiefs came every day to see him. They would crawl. . . . `I don't want to know anything of the
ceremonies used when approaching Mr. Kurtz,' I shouted. Curious, this feeling that came over me that such
details would be more intolerable than those heads drying on the stakes under Mr. Kurtz's windows. After
all, that was only a savage sight, while I seemed at one bound to have been transported into some lightless
region of subtle horrors, where pure, uncomplicated savagery was a positive relief, being something that had
a right to exist--obviously-- in the sunshine. The young man looked at me with surprise. I suppose it did not
41
occur to him Mr. Kurtz was no idol of mine. He forgot I hadn't heard any of these splendid monologues on,
what was it? on love, justice, conduct of life--or what not. If it had come to crawling before Mr. Kurtz, he
crawled as much as the veriest savage of them all. I had no idea of the conditions, he said: these heads were
the heads of rebels. I shocked him excessively by laughing. Rebels! What would be the next definition I was
to hear? There had been enemies, criminals, workers--and these were rebels. Those rebellious heads looked
very subdued to me on their sticks. `You don't know how such a life tries a man like Kurtz,' cried Kurtz's last
disciple. `Well, and you?' I said. `I! I! I am a simple man. I have no great thoughts. I want nothing from
anybody. How can you compare me to . . .?' His feelings were too much for speech, and suddenly he broke
down. `I don't understand,' he groaned. `I've been doing my best to keep him alive, and that's enough. I had
no hand in all this. I have no abilities. There hasn't been a drop of medicine or a mouthful of invalid food for
months here. He was shamefully abandoned. A man like this, with such ideas. Shamefully! Shamefully! I--I- haven't slept for the last ten nights. . . .'
E. M Forster
A Passage to India
Plot Overview
TWO ENGLISHWOMEN, THE YOUNG Miss Adela
Quested and the elderly Mrs. Moore, travel to
India. Adela expects to become engaged to Mrs.
Moore’s son, Ronny, a British magistrate in the
Indian city of Chandrapore. Adela and Mrs.
Moore each hope to see the real India during
their visit, rather than cultural institutions
imported by the British.
At the same time, Aziz, a young Muslim doctor
in India, is increasingly frustrated by the poor
treatment he receives at the hands of the
English. Aziz is especially annoyed with Major
Callendar, the civil surgeon, who has a tendency
to summon Aziz for frivolous reasons in the
middle of dinner. Aziz and two of his educated
friends, Hamidullah and Mahmoud Ali, hold a
lively conversation about whether or not an
Indian can be friends with an Englishman in
India. That night, Mrs. Moore and Aziz happen
to run into each other while exploring a local
mosque, and the two become friendly. Aziz is
moved and surprised that an English person
would treat him like a friend.
Mr. Turton, the collector who governs
Chandrapore, hosts a party so that Adela and
Mrs. Moore may have the opportunity to meet
some of the more prominent and wealthy
Indians in the city. At the event, which proves to
be rather awkward, Adela meets Cyril Fielding,
the principal of the government college in
Chandrapore. Fielding, impressed with Adela’s
open friendliness to the Indians, invites her and
Mrs. Moore to tea with him and the Hindu
professor Godbole. At Adela’s request, Fielding
invites Aziz to tea as well.
At the tea, Aziz and Fielding immediately
become friendly, and the afternoon is
overwhelmingly pleasant until Ronny Heaslop
arrives and rudely interrupts the party. Later
that evening, Adela tells Ronny that she has
decided not to marry him. But that night, the
two are in a car accident together, and the
excitement of the event causes Adela to change
her mind about the marriage.
Not long afterward, Aziz organizes an
expedition to the nearby Marabar Caves for
those who attended Fielding’s tea. Fielding and
Professor Godbole miss the train to Marabar, so
Aziz continues on alone with the two ladies,
Adela and Mrs. Moore. Inside one of the caves,
Mrs. Moore is unnerved by the enclosed space,
which is crowded with Aziz’s retinue, and by the
uncanny echo that seems to translate every
sound she makes into the noise “boum.”
Aziz, Adela, and a guide go on to the higher
caves while Mrs. Moore waits below. Adela,
suddenly realizing that she does not love
Ronny, asks Aziz whether he has more than one
wife—a question he considers offensive. Aziz
storms off into a cave, and when he returns,
Adela is gone. Aziz scolds the guide for losing
Adela, and the guide runs away. Aziz finds
Adela’s broken field-glasses and heads down the
hill. Back at the picnic site, Aziz finds Fielding
waiting for him. Aziz is unconcerned to learn
that Adela has hastily taken a car back to
Chandrapore, as he is overjoyed to see Fielding.
Back in Chandrapore, however, Aziz is
unexpectedly arrested. He is charged with
attempting to rape Adela Quested while she was
in the caves, a charge based on a claim Adela
herself has made.
Fielding, believing Aziz to be innocent, angers
all of British India by joining the Indians in
Aziz’s defense. In the weeks before the trial, the
racial tensions between the Indians and the
English flare up considerably. Mrs. Moore is
42
distracted and miserable because of her
memory of the echo in the cave and because of
her impatience with the upcoming trial. Adela is
emotional and ill; she too seems to suffer from
an echo in her mind. Ronny is fed up with Mrs.
Moore’s lack of support for Adela, and it is
agreed that Mrs. Moore will return to England
earlier than planned. Mrs. Moore dies on the
voyage back to England, but not before she
realizes that there is no “real India”—but rather
a complex multitude of different Indias.
At Aziz’s trial, Adela, under oath, is questioned
about what happened in the caves. Shockingly,
she declares that she has made a mistake: Aziz
is not the person or thing that attacked her in
the cave. Aziz is set free, and Fielding escorts
Adela to the Government College, where she
spends the next several weeks. Fielding begins
to respect Adela, recognizing her bravery in
standing against her peers to pronounce Aziz
innocent. Ronny breaks off his engagement to
Adela, and she returns to England.
Aziz, however, is angry that Fielding would
befriend Adela after she nearly ruined Aziz’s
life, and the friendship between the two men
suffers as a consequence. Then Fielding sails for
a visit to England. Aziz declares that he is done
with the English and that he intends to move to
a place where he will not have to encounter
them.
Two years later, Aziz has become the chief
doctor to the Rajah of Mau, a Hindu region
several hundred miles from Chandrapore. He
has heard that Fielding married Adela shortly
after returning to England. Aziz now virulently
hates all English people. One day, walking
through an old temple with his three children,
he encounters Fielding and his brother-in-law.
Aziz is surprised to learn that the brother-inlaw’s name is Ralph Moore; it turns out that
Fielding married not Adela Quested, but Stella
Moore, Mrs. Moore’s daughter from her second
marriage.
Aziz befriends Ralph. After he accidentally runs
his rowboat into Fielding’s, Aziz renews his
friendship with Fielding as well. The two men
go for a final ride together before Fielding
leaves, during which Aziz tells Fielding that
once the English are out of India, the two will be
able to be friends. Fielding asks why they
cannot be friends now, when they both want to
be, but the sky and the earth seem to say “No,
not yet. . . . No, not there.”
I Hear America Singing
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the
Walt Whitman, 1819 - 1892
young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or
washing,
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it
should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank
or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for
work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his
boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the
hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his
way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at
sundown,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to
none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the
party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious
songs.
43
WAR POETS
Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)
The Soldier
5
10
15
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Sigfried Sassoon
Glory of Women
5
10
(1886-1967)
You love us when we're heroes, home on leave,
Or wounded in a mentionable place.
You worship decorations; you believe
That chivalry redeems the war's disgrace.
You make us shells. You listen with delight,
By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.
You crown our distant ardours while we fight,
And mourn our laurelled memories when we're killed.
You can't believe that British troops 'retire'
When hell's last horror breaks them, and they run,
Trampling the terrible corpses--blind with blood.
O German mother dreaming by the fire,
While you are knitting socks to send your son
His face is trodden deeper in the mud.
44
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
DULCE ET DECORUM EST(1)
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares(2) we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest(3) began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots(4)
Of tired, outstripped(5) Five-Nines(6) that dropped behind.
Gas!(7) Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime(9) . . .
Dim, through the misty panes(10) and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,(11) choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud(12)
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13)
To children ardent(14) for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.(15)
1. DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a
Latin saying (taken from an ode by Horace). The words
were widely understood and often quoted at the start of
the First World War. They mean "It is sweet and right."
The full saying ends the poem: Dulce et decorum est
pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your
country. In other words, it is a wonderful and great
honour to fight and die for your country.
2. Flares - rockets which were sent up to burn with a
brilliant glare to light up men and other targets in the
area between the front lines (See illustration, page 118
of Out in the Dark.)
3. Distant rest - a camp away from the front line where
exhausted soldiers might rest for a few days, or longer
4. Hoots - the noise made by the shells rushing
through the air
5. Outstripped - outpaced, the soldiers have struggled
beyond the reach of these shells which are now falling
behind them as they struggle away from the scene of
battle
6. Five-Nines - 5.9 calibre explosive shells
7. Gas! - poison gas. From the symptoms it would
appear to be chlorine or phosgene gas. The filling of
the lungs with fluid had the same effects as when a
person drowned
8. Helmets - the early name for gas masks
9. Lime - a white chalky substance which can burn
live tissue
10. Panes - the glass in the eyepieces of the gas masks
11. Guttering - Owen probably meant flickering out
like a candle or gurgling like water draining down a
gutter, referring to the sounds in the throat of the
choking man, or it might be a sound partly like
stuttering and partly like gurgling
12. Cud - normally the regurgitated grass that cows
chew usually green and bubbling. Here a similar
looking material was issuing from the soldier's mouth
13. High zest - idealistic enthusiasm, keenly believing
in the rightness of the idea
14. ardent - keen
15. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - see note 1
above. The pronunciation of Dulce is DULKAY. The
letter C in Latin was pronounced like the C in "car".
The word is often given an Italian pronunciation
pronouncing the C like the C in cello, but this is wrong.
Try checking this out in a Latin dictionary. - David
Roberts.
45
William Butler Yeats
Sailing to Byzantium
5
10
15
20
25
30
THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
46
Byzantium
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.
Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.
Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,
More miracle than bird or handiwork,
Planted on the starlit golden bough,
Can like the cocks of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
In glory of changeless metal
Common bird or petal
And all complexities of mire or blood.
At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.
Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,
Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood,
The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles of the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity,
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.
47
Meru
Civilisation is hooped together, brought
Under a rule, under the semblance of peace
By manifold illusion; but man's life is thought,
And he, despite his terror, cannot cease
Ravening through century after century,
Ravening, raging, and uprooting that he may come
Into the desolation of reality:
Egypt and Greece, good-bye, and good-bye, Rome!
Hermits upon Mount Meru or Everest,
Caverned in night under the drifted snow,
Or where that snow and winter's dreadful blast
Beat down upon their naked bodies, know
That day bring round the night, that before dawn
His glory and his monuments are gone.
An Irish Airman Forsees His
Death
Or leave them happier than before.
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
5
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
10
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
Those that I fight I do not hate,
A lonely impulse of delight
Those that I guard I do not love;
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
My county is Kiltartan Cross,
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
No likely end could bring them loss
15
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
Leda and the Swan
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
48
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
49
T.S. Eliot
The Waste Land
"Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis
vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:
Sibylla ti theleis; respondebat illa: apothanein thelo."
(Del resto la Sibilla, a Cuma, l-ho vista anche io coi miei occhi penzolare dentro una ampolla, e quando I
fanciulli le chiedevano: “Sibilla, che vuoi?”, lei rispondeva: “Voglio morire”. – da Petronio, Satyricon)
To Ezra Pound
Il miglior fabbro
(da Dante, Purgatorio XXVI, 115-117, su Arnaut Daniel)
I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
5
10
15
[...]
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying “Stetson!
You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”
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65
70
75
50
III. THE FIRE SERMON
[...]
Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
C. i. f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a week-end at the Metropole.
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215
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
220
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at tea-time, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays, 225
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
230
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house-agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
235
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
240
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
245
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronizing kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit…
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
“Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.”
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.
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255
51
V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID
After the torch-light red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and place and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mud-cracked houses
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?
What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
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340
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350
355
360
365
52
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal
370
375
A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
380
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the roof-tree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment’s surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands
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415
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53
I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
425
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon—O swallow swallow
Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih
shantih
430
54
James Joyce, Dubliners
EVELINE
SHE sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was
leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty
cretonne. She was tired.
Few people passed. The man out of the last house passed on his way home; she
heard his footsteps clacking along the concrete pavement and afterwards
crunching on the cinder path before the new red houses. One time there used to
be a field there in which they used to play every evening with other people's
children. Then a man from Belfast bought the field and built houses in it--not
like their little brown houses but bright brick houses with shining roofs. The
children of the avenue used to play together in that field --the Devines, the
Waters, the Dunns, little Keogh the cripple*, she and her brothers and sisters.
Ernest, however, never played: he was too grown up. Her father used often to
hunt them in out of the field with his blackthorn* stick; but usually little Keogh
used to keep nix and call out when he saw her father coming. Still they seemed
to have been rather happy then. Her father was not so bad then; and besides, her
mother was alive. That was a long time ago; she and her brothers and sisters
were all grown up her mother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was dead, too, and the
Waters had gone back to England. Everything changes. Now she was going to
go away like the others, to leave her home.
Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she
had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the
dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects from
which she had never dreamed of being divided. And yet during all those years
she had never found out the name of the priest whose yellowing photograph
hung on the wall above the broken harmonium beside the coloured print of the
promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque. He had been a school
friend of her father. Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father
used to pass it with a casual word:
"He is in Melbourne now."
She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was that wise? She tried to
weigh each side of the question. In her home anyway she had shelter and food;
she had those whom she had known all her life about her. Of course she had to
work hard, both in the house and at business. What would they say of her in the
Stores when they found out that she had run away with a fellow? Say she was a
fool, perhaps; and her place would be filled up by advertisement. Miss Gavan
would be glad. She had always had an edge on her, especially whenever there
were people listening.
"Miss Hill, don't you see these ladies are waiting?"
"Look lively, Miss Hill, please."
She would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.
But in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like that.
Then she would be married--she, Eveline. People would treat her with respect
then. She would not be treated as her mother had been. Even now, though she
was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father's violence.
She knew it was that that had given her the palpitations. When they were
growing up he had never gone for her like he used to go for Harry and Ernest,
because she was a girl but latterly he had begun to threaten her and say what he
would do to her only for her dead mother's sake. And no she had nobody to
protect her. Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the church decorating
business, was nearly always down somewhere in the country. Besides, the
55
invariable squabble* for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her
unspeakably. She always gave her entire wages--seven shillings--and Harry
always sent up what he could but the trouble was to get any money from her
father. He said she used to squander* the money, that she had no head, that he
wasn't going to give her his hard-earned money to throw about the streets, and
much more, for he was usually fairly bad on Saturday night. In the end he would
give her the money and ask her had she any intention of buying Sunday's dinner.
Then she had to rush out as quickly as she could and do her marketing, holding
her black leather purse tightly in her hand as she elbowed her way through the
crowds and returning home late under her load of provisions. She had hard work
to keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had been
left to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly. It was
hard work--a hard life--but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it
a wholly undesirable life.
She was about to explore another life with Frank. Frank was very kind, manly,
open-hearted. She was to go away with him by the night-boat to be his wife and
to live with him in Buenos Ayres where he had a home waiting for her. How
well she remembered the first time she had seen him; he was lodging in a house
on the main road where she used to visit. It seemed a few weeks ago. He was
standing at the gate, his peaked cap pushed back on his head and his hair
tumbled forward over a face of bronze. Then they had come to know each other.
He used to meet her outside the Stores every evening and see her home. He took
her to see The Bohemian Girl and she felt elated as she sat in an unaccustomed
part of the theatre with him. He was awfully fond of music and sang a little.
People knew that they were courting and, when he sang about the lass that loves
a sailor, she always felt pleasantly confused. He used to call her Poppens* out of
fun. First of all it had been an excitement for her to have a fellow and then she
had begun to like him. He had tales of distant countries. He had started as a deck
boy at a pound a month on a ship of the Allan Line going out to Canada. He told
her the names of the ships he had been on and the names of the different
services. He had sailed through the Straits of Magellan and he told her stories of
the terrible Patagonians. He had fallen on his feet* in Buenos Ayres, he said,
and had come over to the old country just for a holiday. Of course, her father
had found out the affair and had forbidden her to have anything to say to him.
"I know these sailor chaps," he said.
One day he had quarrelled with Frank and after that she had to meet her lover
secretly.
The evening deepened in the avenue. The white of two letters in her lap grew
indistinct. One was to Harry; the other was to her father. Ernest had been her
favourite but she liked Harry too. Her father was becoming old lately, she
noticed; he would miss her. Sometimes he could be very nice. Not long before,
when she had been laid up* for a day, he had read her out a ghost story and
made toast for her at the fire. Another day, when their mother was alive, they
had all gone for a picnic to the Hill of Howth. She remembered her father
putting on her mothers bonnet to make the children laugh.
Her time was running out but she continued to sit by the window, leaning her
head against the window curtain, inhaling the odour of dusty cretonne. Down far
in the avenue she could hear a street organ playing. She knew the air. Strange
that it should come that very night to remind her of the promise to her mother,
her promise to keep the home together as long as she could. She remembered the
last night of her mother's illness; she was again in the close dark room at the
other side of the hall and outside she heard a melancholy air of Italy. The organplayer had been ordered to go away and given sixpence. She remembered her
father strutting* back into the sickroom saying:
"Damned Italians! coming over here!"
As she mused the pitiful vision of her mother's life laid its spell on the very
56
quick of her being--that life of commonplace sacrifices closing in final
craziness. She trembled as she heard again her mother's voice saying constantly
with foolish insistence:
"Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!"*
She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape! Frank
would save her. He would give her life, perhaps love, too. But she wanted to
live. Why should she be unhappy? She had a right to happiness. Frank would
take her in his arms, fold her in his arms. He would save her.
She stood among the swaying* crowd in the station at the North Wall. He held
her hand and she knew that he was speaking to her, saying something about the
passage over and over again. The station was full of soldiers with brown
baggages. Through the wide doors of the sheds she caught a glimpse of the
black mass of the boat, lying in beside the quay wall, with illumined portholes*.
She answered nothing. She felt her cheek pale and cold and, out of a maze of
distress*, she prayed to God to direct her, to show her what was her duty. The
boat blew a long mournful whistle into the mist. If she went, tomorrow she
would be on the sea with Frank, steaming towards Buenos Ayres. Their passage
had been booked. Could she still draw back after all he had done for her? Her
distress awoke a nausea in her body and she kept moving her lips in silent
fervent prayer.
A bell clanged* upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand:
"Come!"
All the seas of the world tumbled* about her heart. He was drawing her into
them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron railing.
"Come!"
No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the
seas she sent a cry of anguish.
"Eveline! Evvy!"
He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to
go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to him, passive, like a
helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.
The Dead
Summary
At the annual dance and dinner party held by Kate
and Julia Morkan and their young niece, Mary
Jane Morkan, the housemaid Lily frantically
greets guests. Set at or just before the feast of the
Epiphany on January 6, which celebrates the
manifestation of Christ's divinity to the Magi, the
party draws together a variety of relatives and
friends. Kate and Julia particularly await the
arrival of their favorite nephew, Gabriel Conroy,
and his wife, Gretta. When they arrive, Gabriel
attempts to chat with Lily as she takes his coat,
but she snaps in reply to his question about her
love life. Gabriel ends the uncomfortable
exchange by giving Lily a generous tip, but the
experience makes him anxious. He relaxes when
he joins his aunts and Gretta, though Gretta's
good-natured teasing about his dedication to
galoshes irritates him. They discuss their decision
to stay at a hotel that evening rather than make the
long trip home. The arrival of another guest, the
always-drunk Freddy Malins, disrupts the
conversation. Gabriel makes sure that Freddy is fit
to join the party while the guests chat over drinks
in between taking breaks from the dancing. An
older gentleman, Mr. Browne, flirts with some
young girls, who dodge his advances. Gabriel
steers a drunken Freddy toward the drawing room
to get help from Mr. Browne, who attempts to
sober Freddy up.
The party continues with a piano performance by
Mary Jane. More dancing follows, which finds
Gabriel paired up with Miss Ivors, a fellow
university instructor. A fervent supporter of Irish
culture, Miss Ivors embarrasses Gabriel by
labeling him a “West Briton” for writing literary
57
reviews for a conservative newspaper. Gabriel
dismisses the accusation, but Miss Ivors pushes
the point by inviting Gabriel to visit the Aran
Isles, where Irish is spoken, during the summer.
When Gabriel declines, explaining that he has
arranged a cycling trip on the continent, Miss
Ivors corners him about his lack of interest in his
own country. Gabriel exclaims that he is sick of
Ireland. After the dance, he flees to a corner and
engages in a few more conversations, but he
cannot forget the interlude with Miss Ivors.
Just before dinner, Julia sings a song for the
guests. Miss Ivors makes her exit to the surprise
of Mary Jane and Gretta, and to the relief of
Gabriel. Finally, dinner is ready, and Gabriel
assumes his place at the head of the table to carve
the goose. After much fussing, everyone eats, and
finally Gabriel delivers his speech, in which he
praises Kate, Julia, and Mary Jane for their
hospitality. Framing this quality as an Irish
strength, Gabriel laments the present age in which
such hospitality is undervalued. Nevertheless, he
insists, people must not linger on the past and the
dead, but live and rejoice in the present with the
living. The table breaks into a loud applause for
Gabriel's speech, and the entire party toasts their
three hostesses.
Later, guests begin to leave, and Gabriel recounts
a story about his grandfather and his horse, which
forever walked in circles even when taken out of
the mill where it worked. After finishing the
anecdote, Gabriel realizes that Gretta stands
transfixed by the song that Mr. Bartell D'Arcy
sings in the drawing room. When the music stops
and the rest of the party guests assemble before
the door to leave, Gretta remains detached and
thoughtful. Gabriel is enamored with and
preoccupied by his wife's mysterious mood and
recalls their courtship as they walk from the house
and catch a cab into Dublin.
At the hotel, Gabriel grows irritated by Gretta's
behavior. She does not seem to share his romantic
inclinations, and in fact bursts into tears. Gretta
confesses that she has been thinking of the song
from the party because a former lover had sung it
to her in her youth in Galway. Gretta recounts the
sad story of this boy, Michael Furey, who died
after waiting outside of her window in the cold.
Gretta later falls asleep, but Gabriel remains
awake, disturbed by Gretta's new information. He
curls up on the bed, contemplating his own
mortality. Seeing the snow at the window, he
envisions it blanketing the graveyard where
Michael Furey rests, as well as all of Ireland.
Ulysses
Plot Overview
STEPHEN DEDALUS SPENDS the early morning
hours of June 16, 1904, remaining aloof from
his mocking friend, Buck Mulligan, and Buck’s
English acquaintance, Haines. As Stephen
leaves for work, Buck orders him to leave the
house key and meet them at the pub at 12:30.
Stephen resents Buck.
Around 10:00 A.M., Stephen teaches a history
lesson to his class at Garrett Deasy’s boys’
school. After class, Stephen meets with Deasy to
receive his wages. The narrow-minded and
prejudiced Deasy lectures Stephen on life.
Stephen agrees to take Deasy’s editorial letter
about cattle disease to acquaintances at the
newspaper.
Stephen spends the remainder of his morning
walking alone on Sandymount Strand, thinking
critically about his younger self and about
perception. He composes a poem in his head
and writes it down on a scrap torn from Deasy’s
letter.
At 8:00 A.M. the same morning, Leopold
Bloom fixes breakfast and brings his wife her
mail and breakfast in bed. One of her letters is
from Molly’s concert tour manager, Blazes
Boylan (Bloom suspects he is also Molly’s
lover)—Boylan will visit at 4:00 this afternoon.
Bloom returns downstairs, reads a letter from
their daughter, Milly, then goes to the outhouse.
At 10:00 A.M., Bloom picks up an amorous
letter from the post office—he is corresponding
with a woman named Martha Clifford under the
pseudonym Henry Flower. He reads the tepid
letter, ducks briefly into a church, then orders
Molly’s lotion from the pharmacist. He runs
into Bantam Lyons, who mistakenly gets the
impression that Bloom is giving him a tip on the
horse Throwaway in the afternoon’s Gold Cup
race.
Around 11:00 A.M., Bloom rides with Simon
Dedalus (Stephen’s father), Martin
Cunningham, and Jack Power to the funeral of
58
Paddy Dignam. The men treat Bloom as
somewhat of an outsider. At the funeral, Bloom
thinks about the deaths of his son and his
father.
At noon, we find Bloom at the offices of the
Freeman newspaper, negotiating an
advertisement for Keyes, a liquor merchant.
Several idle men, including editor Myles
Crawford, are hanging around in the office,
discussing political speeches. Bloom leaves to
secure the ad. Stephen arrives at the newspaper
with Deasy’s letter. Stephen and the other men
leave for the pub just as Bloom is returning.
Bloom’s ad negotiation is rejected by Crawford
on his way out.
At 1:00 P.M., Bloom runs into Josie Breen, an
old flame, and they discuss Mina Purefoy, who
is in labor at the maternity hospital. Bloom
stops in Burton’s restaurant, but he decides to
move on to Davy Byrne’s for a light lunch.
Bloom reminisces about an intimate afternoon
with Molly on Howth. Bloom leaves and is
walking toward the National Library when he
spots Boylan on the street and ducks into the
National Museum.
At 2:00 P.M., Stephen is informally presenting
his “Hamlet theory” in the National Library to
the poet A.E. and the librarians John Eglinton,
Best, and Lyster. A.E. is dismissive of Stephen’s
theory and leaves. Buck enters and jokingly
scolds Stephen for failing to meet him and
Haines at the pub. On the way out, Buck and
Stephen pass Bloom, who has come to obtain a
copy of Keyes’ ad.
At 4:00 P.M., Simon Dedalus, Ben Dollard,
Lenehan, and Blazes Boylan converge at the
Ormond Hotel bar. Bloom notices Boylan’s car
outside and decides to watch him. Boylan soon
leaves for his appointment with Molly, and
Bloom sits morosely in the Ormond
restaurant—he is briefly mollified by Dedalus’s
and Dollard’s singing. Bloom writes back to
Martha, then leaves to post the letter.
At 5:00 P.M., Bloom arrives at Barney Kiernan’s
pub to meet Martin Cunningham about the
Dignam family finances, but Cunningham has
not yet arrived. The citizen, a belligerent Irish
nationalist, becomes increasingly drunk and
begins attacking Bloom’s Jewishness. Bloom
stands up to the citizen, speaking in favor of
peace and love over xenophobic violence. Bloom
and the citizen have an altercation on the street
before Cunningham’s carriage carries Bloom
away.
Bloom relaxes on Sandymount Strand around
sunset, after his visit to Mrs. Dignam’s house
nearby. A young woman, Gerty MacDowell,
notices Bloom watching her from across the
beach. Gerty subtly reveals more and more of
her legs while Bloom surreptitiously
masturbates. Gerty leaves, and Bloom dozes.
At 10:00 P.M., Bloom wanders to the maternity
hospital to check on Mina Purefoy. Also at the
hospital are Stephen and several of his medi-cal student friends, drinking and talking
boisterously about subjects related to birth.
Bloom agrees to join them, though he privately
disapproves of their revelry in light of Mrs.
Purefoy’s struggles upstairs. Buck arrives, and
the men proceed to Burke’s pub. At closing
time, Stephen convinces his friend Lynch to go
to the brothel section of town and Bloom
follows, feeling protective.
Bloom finally locates Stephen and Lynch at
Bella Cohen’s brothel. Stephen is drunk and
imagines that he sees the ghost of his mother—
full of rage, he shatters a lamp with his walking
stick. Bloom runs after Stephen and finds him
in an argument with a British soldier who
knocks him out.
Bloom revives Stephen and takes him for coffee
at a cabman’s shelter to sober up. Bloom invites
Stephen back to his house.
Well after midnight, Stephen and Bloom arrive
back at Bloom’s house. They drink cocoa and
talk about their respective backgrounds. Bloom
asks Stephen to stay the night. Stephen politely
refuses. Bloom sees him out and comes back in
to find evidence of Boylan’s visit. Still, Bloom is
at peace with the world and he climbs into bed,
tells Molly of his day and requests breakfast in
bed.
After Bloom falls asleep, Molly remains awake,
surprised by Bloom’s request for breakfast in
bed. Her mind wanders to her childhood in
Gibraltar, her afternoon of sex with Boylan, her
singing career, Stephen Dedalus. Her thoughts
of Bloom vary wildly over the course of the
monologue, but it ends with a reminiscence of
their intimate moment at Howth and a positive
affirmation.
59
The schema reproduced below first appeared in 1921 and was later printed in Stuart Gilbert's James Joyce's
"Ulysses" in 1930.
Joyce's Schema for Ulysses
Title
Scene
Hour
Organ
Art
Colour
Symbol
Technic
1
Telemachus
The Tower
8 a.m.
Theology
White,
gold
2
Nestor
The School
10 a.m.
History
Brown
Horse
Catechism (personal)
3
Proteus
The Strand
11 a.m.
Philology
Green
Tide
Monologue (male)
4
Calypso
The House
8 a.m.
Kidney
Economics
Orange
Nymph
Narrative (mature)
5
Lotus-eaters
The Bath
10 a.m.
Genitals
Botany,
Chemistry
Eucharist
Narcissism
6
Hades
The Graveyard
11 a.m.
Heart
Religion
White,
black
Caretaker
Incubism
7
Aeolus
The Newspaper
12 noon
Lungs
Rhetoric
Red
Editor
Enthymemic
8
Lestrygonians
The Lunch
1 p.m.
Esophagus
Architecture
Constables
Peristaltic
9
Scylla and
Charybdis
The Library
2 p.m.
Brain
Literature
Stratford,
London
Dialectic
10
Wandering Rocks
The Streets
3 p.m.
Blood
Mechanics
Citizens
Labyrinth
11
Sirens
The Concert
Room
4 p.m.
Ear
Music
Barmaids
Fuga per canonem
12
Cyclops
The Tavern
5 p.m.
Muscle
Politics
Fenian
Gigantism
13
Nausicaa
The Rocks
8 p.m.
Eye, Nose
Painting
Grey, blue Virgin
Tumescence,
detumescence
14
Oxen of the Sun
The Hospital
10 p.m.
Womb
Medicine
White
Mothers
Embryonic
development
15
Circe
The Brothel
12
midnight
Locomotor
Apparatus
Magic
Whore
Hallucination
16
Eumaeus
The Shelter
1 a.m.
Nerves
Navigation
Sailors
Narrative (old)
17
Ithaca
The House
2 a.m.
Skeleton
Science
Comets
Catechism (impersonal)
18
Penelope
The Bed
Earth
Monologue (female)
Flesh
Heir
Narrative (young)
(Chapter VI)
Mr Bloom stood far back, his hat in his hand, counting the bared heads. Twelve. I'm thirteen. No. The chap
in the macintosh is thirteen. Death's number. Where the deuce did he pop out of? He wasn't in the chapel,
that I'll swear. Silly superstition that about thirteen.
Nice soft tweed Ned Lambert has in that suit. Tinge of purple. I had one like that when we lived in Lombard
street west. Dressy fellow he was once. Used to change three suits in the day. Must get that grey suit of
mine turned by Mesias. Hello. It's dyed. His wife I forgot he's not married or his landlady ought to have
picked out those threads for him.
The coffin dived out of sight, eased down by the men straddled on the grave trestles. They struggled up and
out: and all uncovered. Twenty.
Pause.
If we were all suddenly somebody else.
60
from "ULYSSES, ORDER, AND MYTH" (1923)
T.S. Eliot
[...] Among all the criticisms I have seen of the book, I have seen nothing which seemed to me to
appreciate the significance of the method employed —the parallel to the Odyssey, and the use of
appropriate styles and symbols to each division. Yet one might expect this to be the first peculiarity
to attract attention; but it has been treated as an amusing dodge, or scaffolding erected by the author
for the purpose of disposing his realistic tale, of no interest in the completed structure.
Mr. Aldington [for example] treated Mr. Joyce as a prophet of chaos; and wailed at the flood of
Dadaism which his prescient eye saw bursting forth at the tap of the magician’s rod. Of course, the
influence which Mr. Joyce’s book may have is from my point of view an irrelevance. A very great
book may have a very bad influence indeed; and a mediocre book may be in the event most
salutary. The next generation is responsible for its own soul; a man of genius is responsible to his
peers, not to a studio full of uneducated and undisciplined coxcombs. Still, Mr. Aldington [...] finds
the book, if I understand him, to be an invitation to chaos, and an expression of feelings which are
perverse, partial, and a distortion of reality.
But [...] Mr. Joyce’s parallel use of the Odyssey has a great importance. It has the importance of a
scientific discovery. No one else has built a novel upon such a foundation before: it has never
before been necessary. I am not begging the question in calling Ulysses a ‘novel’; and if you call it
an epic it will not matter. If it is not a novel, that is simply because the novel is a form which will
no longer serve; it is because the novel, instead of being a form, was simply the expression of an
age which had not sufficiently lost all form to feel the need of something stricter. Mr. Joyce has
written one novel — the Portrait; Mr. Wyndham Lewis has written one novel Tarr. I do not suppose
that either of them will ever write another ‘novel’. The novel ended with Flaubert and with James. It
is, I think, because Mr. Joyce and Mr. Lewis, being ‘in advance’ of their time, felt a conscious or
probably unconscious dissatisfaction with the form, that their novels are more formless than those
of a dozen clever writers who are unaware of its obsolescence.
In using the myth, in manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity,
Mr. Joyce is pursuing a method which others must pursue after him. They will not be imitators, any
more than the scientist who uses the discoveries of an Einstein in pursuing his own, independent,
further investigations. It is simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a
significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history. It is a
method already adumbrated by Mr. Yeats, and of the need for which I believe Mr. Yeats to have
been the first contemporary to be conscious. It is a method for which the horoscope is auspicious.
Psychology (such as it is, and whether our reaction to it be comic or serious), ethnology, and The
Golden Bough have concurred to make possible what was impossible even a few years ago. Instead
of narrative method, we may now use the mythical method. It is, I seriously believe, a step toward
making the modern world possible for art, toward that order and form which Mr. Aldington so
earnestly desires. And only those who have won their own discipline in secret and without aid, in a
world which offers very little assistance to that end, can be of any use in furthering this advance.
61
Finnegans Wake
(Part I, Chapter I)
riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of
recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this
side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer's rocks by
the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their
mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet,
though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in vanessy,
were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by
arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface. The fall
(bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoord
enenthurnuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian
minstrelsy.
(Extract 2)
I apologuise, Shaun began, but I would rather spinooze you one from the grimm gests of Jacko and
Esaup, fable one, feeble too. Let us here consider the casus, my dear little cousis
(husstenhasstencaffincoffintussemtossemdamandamnacosaghcusaghhobixhatouxpeswchbechoscashlcarca
rcaract) of the Ondt and the Gracehoper.
George Orwell
Animal Farm
Plot Overview
OLD MAJOR, A PRIZE-WINNING BOAR, gathers the
animals of the Manor Farm for a meeting in the
big barn. He tells them of a dream he has had in
which all animals live together with no human
beings to oppress or control them. He tells the
animals that they must work toward such a
paradise and teaches them a song called “Beasts
of England,” in which his dream vision is
lyrically described. The animals greet Major’s
vision with great enthusiasm. When he dies
only three nights after the meeting, three
younger pigs—Snowball, Napoleon, and
Squealer—formulate his main principles into a
philosophy called Animalism. Late one night,
the animals manage to defeat the farmer Mr.
Jones in a battle, running him off the land. They
rename the property Animal Farm and dedicate
themselves to achieving Major’s dream. The
cart-horse Boxer devotes himself to the cause
with particular zeal, committing his great
strength to the prosperity of the farm and
adopting as a personal maxim the affirmation “I
will work harder.”
At first, Animal Farm prospers. Snowball works
at teaching the animals to read, and Napoleon
takes a group of young puppies to educate them
in the principles of Animalism. When Mr. Jones
reappears to take back his farm, the animals
defeat him again, in what comes to be known as
the Battle of the Cowshed, and take the farmer’s
abandoned gun as a token of their victory. As
time passes, however, Napoleon and Snowball
increasingly quibble over the future of the farm,
and they begin to struggle with each other for
power and influence among the other animals.
Snowball concocts a scheme to build an
electricity-generating windmill, but Napoleon
solidly opposes the plan. At the meeting to vote
62
on whether to take up the project, Snowball
gives a passionate speech. Although Napoleon
gives only a brief retort, he then makes a
strange noise, and nine attack dogs—the
puppies that Napoleon had confiscated in order
to “educate”—burst into the barn and chase
Snowball from the farm. Napoleon assumes
leadership of Animal Farm and declares that
there will be no more meetings. From that point
on, he asserts, the pigs alone will make all of the
decisions—for the good of every animal.
Napoleon now quickly changes his mind about
the windmill, and the animals, especially Boxer,
devote their efforts to completing it. One day,
after a storm, the animals find the windmill
toppled. The human farmers in the area declare
smugly that the animals made the walls too
thin, but Napoleon claims that Snowball
returned to the farm to sabotage the windmill.
He stages a great purge, during which various
animals who have allegedly participated in
Snowball’s great conspiracy—meaning any
animal who opposes Napoleon’s uncontested
leadership—meet instant death at the teeth of
the attack dogs. With his leadership
unquestioned (Boxer has taken up a second
maxim, “Napoleon is always right”), Napoleon
begins expanding his powers, rewriting history
to make Snowball a villain. Napoleon also
begins to act more and more like a human
being—sleeping in a bed, drinking whisky, and
engaging in trade with neighboring farmers.
The original Animalist principles strictly
forbade such activities, but Squealer,
Napoleon’s propagandist, justifies every action
to the other animals, convincing them that
Napoleon is a great leader and is making things
better for everyone—despite the fact that the
common animals are cold, hungry, and
overworked.
Mr. Frederick, a neighboring farmer, cheats
Napoleon in the purchase of some timber and
then attacks the farm and dynamites the
windmill, which had been rebuilt at great
expense. After the demolition of the windmill, a
pitched battle ensues, during which Boxer
receives major wounds. The animals rout the
farmers, but Boxer’s injuries weaken him. When
he later falls while working on the windmill, he
senses that his time has nearly come. One day,
Boxer is nowhere to be found. According to
Squealer, Boxer has died in peace after having
been taken to the hospital, praising the
Rebellion with his last breath. In actuality,
Napoleon has sold his most loyal and longsuffering worker to a glue maker in order to get
money for whisky.
Years pass on Animal Farm, and the pigs
become more and more like human beings—
walking upright, carrying whips, and wearing
clothes. Eventually, the seven principles of
Animalism, known as the Seven
Commandments and inscribed on the side of
the barn, become reduced to a single principle
reading “all animals are equal, but some
animals are more equal than others.” Napoleon
entertains a human farmer named Mr.
Pilkington at a dinner and declares his intent to
ally himself with the human farmers against the
laboring classes of both the human and animal
communities. He also changes the name of
Animal Farm back to the Manor Farm, claiming
that this title is the “correct” one. Looking in at
the party of elites through the farmhouse
window, the common animals can no longer tell
which are the pigs and which are the human
beings.
1984
Plot Overview
WINSTON SMITH IS A LOW-RANKING MEMBER OF
the ruling Party in London, in the nation of
Oceania. Everywhere Winston goes, even his
own home, the Party watches him through
telescreens; everywhere he looks he sees the
face of the Party’s seemingly omniscient leader,
a figure known only as Big Brother. The Party
controls everything in Oceania, even the
people’s history and language. Currently, the
Party is forcing the implementation of an
invented language called Newspeak, which
attempts to prevent political rebellion by
eliminating all words related to it. Even
thinking rebellious thoughts is illegal. Such
thoughtcrime is, in fact, the worst of all crimes.
As the novel opens, Winston feels frustrated by
the oppression and rigid control of the Party,
which prohibits free thought, sex, and any
expression of individuality. Winston dislikes the
party and has illegally purchased a diary in
which to write his criminal thoughts. He has
also become fixated on a powerful Party
member named O’Brien, whom Winston
believes is a secret member of the
Brotherhood—the mysterious, legendary group
that works to overthrow the Party.
Winston works in the Ministry of Truth, where
he alters historical records to fit the needs of the
Party. He notices a coworker, a beautiful darkhaired girl, staring at him, and worries that she
is an informant who will turn him in for his
thoughtcrime. He is troubled by the Party’s
63
control of history: the Party claims that Oceania
has always been allied with Eastasia in a war
against Eurasia, but Winston seems to recall a
time when this was not true. The Party also
claims that Emmanuel Goldstein, the alleged
leader of the Brotherhood, is the most
dangerous man alive, but this does not seem
plausible to Winston. Winston spends his
evenings wandering through the poorest
neighborhoods in London, where the
proletarians, or proles, live squalid lives,
relatively free of Party monitoring.
One day, Winston receives a note from the
dark-haired girl that reads “I love you.” She tells
him her name, Julia, and they begin a covert
affair, always on the lookout for signs of Party
monitoring. Eventually they rent a room above
the secondhand store in the prole district where
Winston bought the diary. This relationship
lasts for some time. Winston is sure that they
will be caught and punished sooner or later (the
fatalistic Winston knows that he has been
doomed since he wrote his first diary entry),
while Julia is more pragmatic and optimistic. As
Winston’s affair with Julia progresses, his
hatred for the Party grows more and more
intense. At last, he receives the message that he
has been waiting for: O’Brien wants to see him.
Winston and Julia travel to O’Brien’s luxurious
apartment. As a member of the powerful Inner
Party (Winston belongs to the Outer Party),
O’Brien leads a life of luxury that Winston can
only imagine. O’Brien confirms to Winston and
Julia that, like them, he hates the Party, and
says that he works against it as a member of the
Brotherhood. He indoctrinates Winston and
Julia into the Brotherhood, and gives Winston a
copy of Emmanuel Goldstein’s book, the
manifesto of the Brotherhood. Winston reads
the book—an amalgam of several forms of classbased twentieth-century social theory—to Julia
in the room above the store. Suddenly, soldiers
barge in and seize them. Mr. Charrington, the
proprietor of the store, is revealed as having
been a member of the Thought Police all along.
Torn away from Julia and taken to a place
called the Ministry of Love, Winston finds that
O’Brien, too, is a Party spy who simply
pretended to be a member of the Brotherhood
in order to trap Winston into committing an
open act of rebellion against the Party. O’Brien
spends months torturing and brainwashing
Winston, who struggles to resist. At last,
O’Brien sends him to the dreaded Room 101,
the final destination for anyone who opposes
the Party. Here, O’Brien tells Winston that he
will be forced to confront his worst fear.
Throughout the novel, Winston has had
recurring nightmares about rats; O’Brien now
straps a cage full of rats onto Winston’s head
and prepares to allow the rats to eat his face.
Winston snaps, pleading with O’Brien to do it to
Julia, not to him.
Giving up Julia is what O’Brien wanted from
Winston all along. His spirit broken, Winston is
released to the outside world. He meets Julia,
but no longer feels anything for her. He has
accepted the Party entirely and has learned to
love Big Brother.
Rewriting History
(1984, Part 1, Chapter 4)
With the deep, unconscious sigh which not even the nearness of the telescreen
could prevent him from uttering when his day's work started, Winston pulled the
speakwrite towards him, blew the dust from its mouthpiece, and put on his
spectacles. Then he unrolled and clipped together four small cylinders of paper
which had already flopped out of the pneumatic tube on the right-hand side of his
desk.
In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite,
a small pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a larger one for
newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large
oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste
paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the
building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some
reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document
was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about,
it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it
in, whereupon it would be whirled* away on a current of warm air to the
64
enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.
Trascinar via
Winston examined the four slips of paper which he had unrolled. Each contained
a message of only one or two lines, in the abbreviated jargon -- not actually
Newspeak, but consisting largely of Newspeak words -- which was used in the
Ministry for internal purposes. They ran:
times 17.3.84 bb speech malreported africa rectify
times 19.12.83 forecasts 3 yp 4th quarter 83 misprints verify current issue
times 14.2.84 miniplenty malquoted chocolate rectify
times 3.12.83 reporting bb dayorder doubleplusungood refs unpersons rewrite
fullwise upsub antefiling
With a faint feeling of satisfaction Winston laid the fourth message aside. It was
an intricate and responsible job and had better be dealt with last. The other three
were routine matters, though the second one would probably mean some tedious
wading* through lists of figures.
Winston dialled 'back numbers' on the telescreen and called for the appropriate
issues of The Times, which slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few
minutes' delay. The messages he had received referred to articles or news items
which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, as the
official phrase had it, to rectify. For example, it appeared from The Times of the
seventeenth of March that Big Brother, in his speech of the previous day, had
predicted that the South Indian front would remain quiet but that a Eurasian
offensive would shortly be launched in North Africa. As it happened, the Eurasian
Higher Command had launched its offensive in South India and left North Africa
alone. It was therefore necessary to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brother's speech,
in such a way as to make him predict the thing that had actually happened. Or
again, The Times of the nineteenth of December had published the official
forecasts of the output of various classes of consumption goods in the fourth
quarter of 1983, which was also the sixth quarter of the Ninth Three-Year Plan.
Today's issue contained a statement of the actual output, from which it appeared
that the forecasts were in every instance grossly wrong. Winston's job was to
rectify the original figures by making them agree with the later ones. As for the
third message, it referred to a very simple error which could be set right in a
couple of minutes. As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had
issued a promise (a 'categorical pledge' were the official words) that there would
be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was
aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at
the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original
promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at
some time in April.
As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his
speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of The Times and pushed them
into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible
unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself
had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.
What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he did
not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the
corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The
Aprirsi un varco
65
Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the
original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead.
This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to
books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons,
photographs -- to every kind of literature or documentation which might
conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost
minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction
made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct,
nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the
needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a
palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no
case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any
falsification had taken place. The largest section of the Records Department, far
larger than the one on which Winston worked, consisted simply of persons whose
duty it was to track down and collect all copies of books, newspapers, and other
documents which had been superseded* and were due for destruction. A number
of The Times which might, because of changes in political alignment, or mistaken
prophecies uttered by Big Brother, have been rewritten a dozen times still stood
on the files bearing its original date, and no other copy existed to contradict it.
Books, also, were recalled and rewritten again and again, and were invariably
reissued without any admission that any alteration had been made. Even the
written instructions which Winston received, and which he invariably got rid of as
soon as he had dealt with them, never stated or implied that an act of forgery was
to be committed: always the reference was to slips, errors, misprints, or
misquotations which it was necessary to put right in the interests of accuracy.
But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty's figures, it was
not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for
another. Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connexion with
anything in the real world, not even the kind of connexion that is contained in a
direct lie. Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their
rectified version. A great deal of the time you were expected to make them up out
of your head. For example, the Ministry of Plenty's forecast had estimated the
output of boots for the quarter at one-hundred-and-forty-five million pairs. The
actual output was given as sixty-two millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the
forecast, marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the
usual claim that the quota had been overfulfilled. In any case, sixty-two millions
was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than one-hundred-and-fortyfive millions. Very likely no boots had been produced at all. Likelier still, nobody
knew how many had been produced, much less cared. All one knew was that
every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while
perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot. And so it was with every
class of recorded fact, great or small. Everything faded away into a shadow-world
in which, finally, even the date of the year had become uncertain.
rimpiazzati
66
Samuel Beckett
Waiting for Godot
Summary
Two men, Vladimir and Estragon, meet near a
tree. They converse on various topics and reveal
that they are waiting there for a man named
Godot. While they wait, two other men enter.
Pozzo is on his way to the market to sell his
slave, Lucky. He pauses for a while to converse
with Vladimir and Estragon. Lucky entertains
them by dancing and thinking, and Pozzo and
Lucky leave.
After Pozzo and Lucky leave, a boy enters and
tells Vladimir that he is a messenger from
Godot. He tells Vladimir that Godot will not be
coming tonight, but that he will surely come
tomorrow. Vladimir asks him some questions
about Godot and the boy departs. After his
departure, Vladimir and Estragon decide to
leave, but they do not move as the curtain falls.
The next night, Vladimir and Estragon again
meet near the tree to wait for Godot. Lucky and
Pozzo enter again, but this time Pozzo is blind
and Lucky is dumb. Pozzo does not remember
meeting the two men the night before. They
leave and Vladimir and Estragon continue to
wait.
Shortly after, the boy enters and once again tells
Vladimir that Godot will not be coming. He
insists that he did not speak to Vladimir
yesterday. After he leaves, Estragon and
Vladimir decide to leave, but again they do not
move as the curtain falls, ending the play.
67
Derek Walcott
A Far Cry from Africa
5
10
15
20
25
30
A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt
Of Africa. Kikuyu, quick as flies
Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.
Corpses are scattered through a paradise.
Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries:
'Waste no compassion on these separate dead!'
Statistics justify and scholars seize
The salients of colonial policy,
What is that to the white child hacked in bed?
To savages, expendable as Jews?
Threshed out by beaters, the long rushes break
In a white dust of ibises whose cries
Have wheeled since civilization's dawn
From the parched river or beast-teeming plain.
The violence of beast on beast is read
As natural law, but upright man
Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain.
Delirious as these worried beasts, his wars
Dance to the tightened carcass of a drum,
While he calls courage still that native dread
Of the white peace contracted by the dead.
Again brutish necessity wipes its hands
Upon the napkins of a dirty cause, again
A waste of our compassion, as with Spain,
The gorilla wrestles with the superman.
I who am poisoned with the blood of both,
Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
I who have cursed
The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool? How
can I turn from Africa and live?
68
Emily Dickinson
To make a prairie
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.
There is no frigate
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
The morns are meeker
The morns are meeker than they were The nuts are getting brown The berry's cheek is plumper The Rose is out of town.
The Maple wears a gayer scarf The field a scarlet gown Lest I should be old fashioned
I'll put a trinket on.
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Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
Evening
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
And looked down one as far as I could
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
And having perhaps the better claim,
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Philip Larkin (1922-1985)
Annus Mirabilis (1974)
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban
And the Beatles' first LP.
Up to then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.
Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.
So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban
And the Beatles' first LP.
70
Seamus Heaney (1939-)
Digging (1966)
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.
Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge
deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.
My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and
slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.
71
Promemoria per la tesina
1. Trovare un tema originale
2. Scegliere tra schema concettuale (povero, ma al sicuro da commenti) e tesina “intera” (più
ricca, ma esposta a critiche)
3. Attenzione al tempo: 13 minuti al massimo!
4. Se si usano sussidi multimediali, attenzione che lo strumento usato sia consono ai
contenuti. E’ inutile usare PowerPoint per scrivere pagine di libro!
5. Evitare collegamenti arditi. Meglio escludere una materia che farla entrare a forza.
6. Attenzione alla eventuale bibliografia ed al modo in cui sono citati titoli o estratti di opere!
7. Ricordate: la tesina è su un argomento, NON su varie materie. In altre parole, si deve
cercare di trattare un tema (amore, natura, luna, …) che è stato visto da vari autori, e il cui
punto di vista può essere analogo, o simile, o diverso da quello di altri e dal nostro.
RESOURCES ON THE INTERNET
Spark Notes: http://www.sparknotes.com/
Cliffs Notes: http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
eNotes: http://www.enotes.com/
72
CONTENTS
E. Burke, On the Sublime and the Beautiful
2
W. Wordsworth
Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1800)
3
S.T. Coleridge, from Biografia Literaria
4
W. Wordsworth
My Heart Leaps Up
England 1802
5
5
S.T. Coleridge
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 7
6
8
10
13
15
G. G. Byron
There is a pleasure…
18
J. Keats
On First Looking into …
18
C. Dickens
Hard Times (Plot)
The One Thing Needful
The Keynote
Bleak House: London
19
20
20
22
E. Gaskell, Mary Barton
23
24
The Unreliable Narrator
W.M. Thackeray: Barry Lyndon
26
26
R. Kipling
Kim (Plot)
“Kim at an Indian railway station”
36
36
J. Conrad
Heart of Darkness
Plot
“The Miracle”
“He was hollow at the core”
37
39
40
E.M. Forster
A Passage to India (Plot)
41
Walt Whitman
I hear America Singing
42
War Poets
R. Brooke, “The Soldier”
S. Sassoon, “Glory of Women”
W. Owen, “Dulce et decorum est”
43
43
44
W.B. Yeats
Sailing to Byzantium
Byzantium
Meru
An Irish Airman…
Leda and the Swan
The Second Coming
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
45
46
47
47
47
48
48
The Waste Land-Epigraphe
Section 1
Section 3
Section 5
49
49
50
51
Eveline
The Dead (Plot)
Ulysses (Plot)
Ulysses: schema
Ch. 6: “Mr Bloom stood far back”
54
56
57
59
59
from “Ulysses, Order and Myth”
60
Finnegans Wake, Ch. 1
61
J. Joyce
27
27
28
28
O. Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray
-Plot
- The Preface
- Quotations
32
34
T.S. Eliot
R. Browning
My Last Duchess
G. M. Hopkins
Pied Beauty
God’s Grandeur
The Windhover
Carrion Comfort
The Importance of Being Earnest
Plot
Quotations
T.S. Eliot
29
30
31
73
Finnegans Wake, “I apologuise”
61
R. Frost
G. Orwell
Animal Farm (Plot)
1984
Plot
“Rewriting History”
Samuel Beckett
Waiting for Godot (Plot)
D. Walcott
A Far Cry from Africa
E. Dickinson
To make a Prairie
There is no frigate
The morns are meeker
61
Stopping by Woods…
The Road not Taken
69
69
Annus Mirabilis
69
62
63
P. Larkin
66
S. Heaney
Digging
70
Promemoria per la tesina
71
Resources on the Internet
71
67
68
68
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