It is morning, very early, but inside the large empty house it is already warm, particularly as one climbs toward the upper floors where the sun's rays are concentrated all through the scorching afternoons of midsummer. The house looks inhabited, judging at least by the articles of female clothing hung as if in haste on the coatstands in the hall, but all is silence. And the whole place seems deserted: the immense wooden staircase with its monumental bannister, the first-floor gallery, the intricate corridors of the second floor, the successive rooms whose doors David H. throws open one after another, he too making no sound, as if hoping to catch someone just waking up, or drowsing in a world still peopled by airy phantoms, delicate silhouettes in long voile dresses and hats with broad translucent brims who glide softly through grey meadows iridescent with dew, imperceptible droplets of dew lining each blade of grass and shining against the light of the low-slanting morning sun, warm already though hardly higher than the crest of the gentle slope up which the narrow path leads to the house. The worn rope sandals D.H. is wearing are soundless on the beaten earth of the path, soundless too as he steps over the threshold, pushing open - just enough for him to pass through - the heavy door he finds ajar, soundless as he crosses the deserted hall, soundless climbing the short straight flights of the wooden staircase, soundless still as D.H. opens the door of a room and stands in the embrasure, having pushed the leaf through half its arc. Like all the other rooms in the house it looks inhabited, looks at least as if it were inhabited not long ago: an unmade bed, its tangled sheets seemingly pushed back a moment before by the young sleeper, only recently emerged from dreams that seem to linger in a drowsiness she is reluctant to shake off as her bare feet, moving with the improbable step of the sleepwalker, cross the faded flowers of the carpet to the rustic washstand where the girl slowly pours the contents of the water jug into the white china bowl, bending over the bowl after she has done so for a glimpse of her motionless face, her still sleepy but unblinking eyes, her fine features, sullen as an absent child's, her long, long neck, and one gleaming shoulder bared by the full-length, loosely cut tulle nightdress having slipped over her skin. Then, with the same slowness, she stretches out the other arm (the one with the shoulder concealed), which emerges from a flared sleeve cut off a little below the elbow, and brings the tips other long fingers closer and closer to the limpid surface. Soon her movements cease completely and she stays like that, her gaze dwelling unsleepingly on her slender, irregularly open hand, now suspended above the immaterial, solidified, inaccessible water. Some seconds, or some hours, or some years later the white hand has smashed the liquid mirror and obliterated the reflected image, the long transparent nightdress, the face bent over, the wide-open eyes. And when D.H. pushes the door the room is empty, like the rest of the house. The water in the bowl, clear of any impurity as yet, is calm again, but its surface now reflects only the tiny panes of the casement, beyond which the early-morning sun shines on the sloping meadows bright with white frost or dew where the phantom girls in long muslin dresses and sunbonnets glide with the light behind them, their feet hardly touching the iridescent grass. Inside the room, against the light, the invisible golden dust continues to descend silently through the still air, causing no more than a slight diffusion of the light, afterwards landing, at length, on every horizontal or only gently sloping surface, on the washstand with its abandoned utensils, on the carpet with its faded areas of colour forming arabesques that are already unidentifiable, on the wrought-iron bed with its intertwined white volutes, its disarranged covers, its chiffon sheets...
[Topology of a Phantom City, Robbe-Grillet, A.]
Tuesday, 7 October 2014
...of a dialogue with animals
- 'Twas by a poor ass who had just turned in with a couple of large panniers upon his back, to collect eleemosunary turnip tops and cabbage leaves; and stood dubious, with his two forefeet on the inside of the threshold, and with his two hinder feet towards the street, as not knowing very well whether he was to go in, or no.
Now, 'tis an animal (be in what hurry I may) I cannot bear to strike - there is a patient endurance of sufferings, wrote so unaffectedly in his looks and carriage, which pleads so mightily for him, that it always disarms me; and to that degree, that I do not like to speak unkindly to him: on the contrary, meet him where I will - whether in town or country - in cart or under panniers - whether in liberty or bondage - I have ever something civil to say to him on my part; and as one word begets another (if he has as little to do as I) - I generally fall into conversation with him; and surely never is my imagination so busy as in framing his responses from the etchings of his countenance - and where those carry me not deep enough - in flying from my own heart into his, and seeing what is natural for an ass to think - as well as a man, upon the occasion. In truth, it is the only creature of all classes of beings below me, with whom I can do this: for parrots, jackdaws, etc. - I never exchange a word with them - nor with the apes, etc. for pretty near the same reason; they act by rote, as the others speak by it, and equally make me silent: nay my dog and my cat, though I value them both - (and for my dog he would speak if he could) - yet some how or other, they neither of them possess the talents for conversation - I can make nothing of a discourse with them, beyond the proposition, the reply, and rejoinder, which terminated my father's and my mother's conversations, in his beds of justice - and those utter'd - there's an end of the dialogue.
- But with an ass, I can commune for ever.
Come Honesty! said I, - seeing it was impracticable to pass betwixt him and the gate - art thou for going in, or going out?
The ass twisted his head round to look up the street -
Well - replied I - we'll wait a minute for thy driver:
- He turned his head thoughtful about, and looked wistfully the opposite way -
I understand thee perfectly; answered I - if thou tamest a wrong step in this affair, he will cudgel thee to death - Well! a minute is but a minute, and if it saves a fellow creature a drubbing, it shall not be set down as ill-spent.
[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Sterne, L.]
Now, 'tis an animal (be in what hurry I may) I cannot bear to strike - there is a patient endurance of sufferings, wrote so unaffectedly in his looks and carriage, which pleads so mightily for him, that it always disarms me; and to that degree, that I do not like to speak unkindly to him: on the contrary, meet him where I will - whether in town or country - in cart or under panniers - whether in liberty or bondage - I have ever something civil to say to him on my part; and as one word begets another (if he has as little to do as I) - I generally fall into conversation with him; and surely never is my imagination so busy as in framing his responses from the etchings of his countenance - and where those carry me not deep enough - in flying from my own heart into his, and seeing what is natural for an ass to think - as well as a man, upon the occasion. In truth, it is the only creature of all classes of beings below me, with whom I can do this: for parrots, jackdaws, etc. - I never exchange a word with them - nor with the apes, etc. for pretty near the same reason; they act by rote, as the others speak by it, and equally make me silent: nay my dog and my cat, though I value them both - (and for my dog he would speak if he could) - yet some how or other, they neither of them possess the talents for conversation - I can make nothing of a discourse with them, beyond the proposition, the reply, and rejoinder, which terminated my father's and my mother's conversations, in his beds of justice - and those utter'd - there's an end of the dialogue.
- But with an ass, I can commune for ever.
Come Honesty! said I, - seeing it was impracticable to pass betwixt him and the gate - art thou for going in, or going out?
The ass twisted his head round to look up the street -
Well - replied I - we'll wait a minute for thy driver:
- He turned his head thoughtful about, and looked wistfully the opposite way -
I understand thee perfectly; answered I - if thou tamest a wrong step in this affair, he will cudgel thee to death - Well! a minute is but a minute, and if it saves a fellow creature a drubbing, it shall not be set down as ill-spent.
[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Sterne, L.]
...of an unwritten page
To conceive this right, - call for pen and ink - here's paper ready to your hand. - Sit down, Sir, paint her to your own mind - as like your mistress as you can - as unlike your wife as your conscience will let you - 'tis all one to me - please but your own fancy in it.
- Was there anything in Nature so sweet! - so exquisite! - Then, dear Sir, how could my uncle Toby resist it?
Thrice happy book! thou wilt have one page, at least, within thy covers, which MALICE will not blacken, and which IGNORANCE cannot misrepresent.
[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Sterne, L.]
- Was there anything in Nature so sweet! - so exquisite! - Then, dear Sir, how could my uncle Toby resist it?
Thrice happy book! thou wilt have one page, at least, within thy covers, which MALICE will not blacken, and which IGNORANCE cannot misrepresent.
[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Sterne, L.]
...of nostalgia
A delusive, delicious consultation or two of this kind, betwixt my uncle Toby and Trim, upon the demolition of Dunkirk, for a moment rallied back the ideas of those pleasures, which were slipping from under him: - still - still all went on heavily - the magic left the mind the weaker - STILLNESS, with SILENCE at her back, entered the solitary parlour, and drew their gauzy mantle over my uncle Toby's head; - and LISTLESSNESS, with her lax fibre and undirected eye, sat quietly down beside him in his arm chair. - No longer Amberg, and Rhinberg, and Limbourg, and Huy, and Bonn, in one year, - and the prospect of Landen, and Trerebach, and Drusen, and Dendermond, the next, - hurried on the blood: - No longer did saps, and mines, and blinds, and gabions, and palisadoes, keep out this fair enemy of man's repose: - No more could my uncle Toby, after passing the French lines, as he eat his egg at supper, from thence break into the heart of France, - cross over the Oyes, and with all Picardie open behind him, march up to the gates of Paris, and fall asleep with nothing but ideas of glory: - No more was he to dream, he had fixed the royal standard upon the tower of the Bastile, and awake with it streaming in his head.
[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Sterne, L.]
[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Sterne, L.]
...of slander
What a jovial and a merry world would this be, may it please your worships, but for that inextricable labyrinth of debts, cares, woes, want, grief, discontent, melancholy, large jointures, impositions, and lies!
Doctor Slop, like a son of a w-, as my father called him for it, - to exalt himself, - debased me to death, - and made ten thousand times more of Susannah's accident, than there was any grounds for; so that in a week's time, or less, it was in every body's mouth, That poor Master Shandy * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * entirely. - And FAME, who loves to double every thing, - in three days more, had sworn positively she saw it, - and all the world, as usual, gave credit to her evidence - "That the nursery window had not only * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *; - but that * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *'s also."
Could the world have been sued like a BODY-CORPORATE, - my father had brought an action upon the case, and trounced it sufficiently; but to fall foul of individuals about it - as every should who had mentioned the affair, did it with the greatest pity imaginable; - 'twas like flying in the very face of his best friends: - And yet to acquiesce under the report, in silence - was to acknowledge it openly, - at least in the opinion of one half of the world; and to make a bustle again, in contradicting it, - was to confirm it as strongly in the opinion of the other half.-
[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Sterne, L.]
Doctor Slop, like a son of a w-, as my father called him for it, - to exalt himself, - debased me to death, - and made ten thousand times more of Susannah's accident, than there was any grounds for; so that in a week's time, or less, it was in every body's mouth, That poor Master Shandy * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * entirely. - And FAME, who loves to double every thing, - in three days more, had sworn positively she saw it, - and all the world, as usual, gave credit to her evidence - "That the nursery window had not only * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *; - but that * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *'s also."
Could the world have been sued like a BODY-CORPORATE, - my father had brought an action upon the case, and trounced it sufficiently; but to fall foul of individuals about it - as every should who had mentioned the affair, did it with the greatest pity imaginable; - 'twas like flying in the very face of his best friends: - And yet to acquiesce under the report, in silence - was to acknowledge it openly, - at least in the opinion of one half of the world; and to make a bustle again, in contradicting it, - was to confirm it as strongly in the opinion of the other half.-
[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Sterne, L.]
...of burning ears
My mother was going very gingerly in the dark along the passage which led to the parlour, as my uncle Toby pronounced the word wife. - 'Tis a shrill, penetrating sound of itself, and Obadiah had helped it by leaving the door a little a-jar, so that my mother heard enough of it, to imagine herself the subject of the conversation: so laying the edge of her finger across her two lips - holding in her breath, and bending her head a little downwards, with a twist of her neck - (not towards the door, but from it, by which means her ear was brought to the chink) - she listened with all her powers: - the listening slave, with the Goddess of Silence at his back, could not have given a finer thought for an intaglio.
In this attitude I am determined to let her stand for five minutes: till I bring up the affairs of the kitchen (as Rapin does those of the church) to the same period.
[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Sterne, L.]
In this attitude I am determined to let her stand for five minutes: till I bring up the affairs of the kitchen (as Rapin does those of the church) to the same period.
[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Sterne, L.]
...of brotherly love
My father lay stretched across the bed as still as if the hand of death had pushed him down, for a full hour and a half, before he began to play upon the floor with the toe of that foot which hung over the bed-side; my uncle Toby's heart was a pound lighter for it. - In a few moments, his left-hand, the knuckles of which had all the time reclined upon the handle of the chamber-pot, came to its feeling - he thrust it a little more within the valance - drew up his hand, when he had done, into his bosom - gave a hem! - My good uncle Toby, with infinite pleasure answered it; and full gladly would have ingrafted a sentence of consolation upon the opening it afforded; but having no talents, as I said, that way, and fearing moreover that he might set out with something which might make a bad matter worse, he contented himself with resting his chin placidly upon the cross of his crutch.
Now whether the compression shortened my uncle Toby's face into a more pleasurable oval, - or that the philanthropy of his heart, in seeing his brother beginning to emerge out of the sea of his afflictions, had braced up his muscles, - so that the compression upon his chin only doubled the benignity which was there before, is not hard to decide. - My father, in turning his eyes, was struck with such a gleam of sun-shine in his face, as melted down the sullenness of his grief in a moment.
[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Sterne, L.]
Now whether the compression shortened my uncle Toby's face into a more pleasurable oval, - or that the philanthropy of his heart, in seeing his brother beginning to emerge out of the sea of his afflictions, had braced up his muscles, - so that the compression upon his chin only doubled the benignity which was there before, is not hard to decide. - My father, in turning his eyes, was struck with such a gleam of sun-shine in his face, as melted down the sullenness of his grief in a moment.
[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Sterne, L.]
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