Antony and Cleopatra - Opening

Enter DEMETRIUS and PHILO



PHILO Nay, but this dotage of our general's
O'erflows the measure. Those his goodly eyes,
That o'er the files and musters of the war
Have glowed like plated Mars, now bend, now turn
The office and devotion of their view
Upon a tawny front. His captain's heart,
Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst
The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper
And is become the bellows and the fan
To cool a gypsy's lust.


Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge
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Cambridge University Press 1990

First published 1990


Printed in Great Britain at
the University Press, Cambridge

Agamemnon - V:1280

Lost are my father's altars, but the block is there

to reek with sacrificial blood, my own. We two

must die, yet die not vengeless by the gods. For there

shall come one to avenge us also, born to slay

his mother, and to wreak death for his father's blood.

Outlaw and wanderer, driven far from his own land,

he will come back to cope these stones of inward hate.

Agamemnon - V:1190

Cassandra

No longer shall my prophecies like some young girl

new-married glance from under veils, but bright and strong

as winds blow into morning and the sun's uprise

shall wax along the swell like some great wave, to burst

at last upon the shining of this agony.

Now I will tell you plainly and from no cryptic speech;

bear me then witness, running at my heels upon

the scent of these old brutal things done long ago.

There is a choir that sings as one, that shall not again

leave this house ever; the song thereof breaks harsh with menace.

And drugged to double fury on the wine of men's

blood shed, there lurks forever here a drunken rout

of ingrown vengeful spirits never to be cast forth.

Hanging above the hall they chant their song of hate

and the old sin; and taking up the strain in turn

spit curses on that man who spoiled his brother's bed.

Did I go wide, or hit, like a real archer? Am I

some swindling seer who hawks his lies from door to door?

Upon your oath, bear witness that I know by heart

the legend of ancient wickedness within this house.

Agamemnon - V:1025

But when the black and mortal blood of man
has fallen to the ground before his feet, who then
can sing spells to call it back again?
Did Zeus not warn us once
when he struck to impotence
that one who could in truth charm back the dead men?
Had the gods not so ordained
that fate should stand against fate
to check any man's excess.
my heart now would have outrun speech
to break forth the water of its grief.
But this is so; I murmur deep in darkness
sore at heart; my hope is gone now
ever again to unwind some crucial good
from the flames about my heart.

Agamemnon - V:870

here in his house. Had Agamemnon taken all

the wounds the tale whereof was carried home to me,

he had been cut full of gashes like a fishing net.

If he had died each time that rumor told his death,

he must have been some triple-bodied Geryon

back from the dead with threefold cloak of earth upon

his body, and killed once for every shape assumed.

Because such tales broke out forever on my rest,

many a time they cut me down and freed my throat
from the noose overslung where I had caught it fast.

Agamemnon - V:775

And Righteousness is a shining in

the smoke of mean houses.

Her blessing is on the just man.

From high halls starred with gold by reeking hands

she turns back

with eyes that glance away to the simple in heart,

spurning the strength of gold

stamped false with flattery.

And all things she steers to fulfilment.

Agamemnon - V:690

Chorus

Who is he that named you so

fatally in every way?

Could it be some mind unseen

in divination of your destiny

shaping to the lips that name

for the bride of spears and blood,

Helen, which is death? Appropriately

death of ships, death of men and cities

from the bower's soft curtained

and secluded luxury she sailed then,

driven on the giant west wind,

and armored men in their thousands came,

huntsmen down the oar blade's fading footprint

to struggle in blood with those

who by the banks of Simoeis

beached their hulls where the leaves break.

Agamemnon - V:655

For they, of old the deepest enemies, sea and fire,

made a conspiracy and gave the oath of hand

to blast in ruin our unhappy Argive army.

At night the sea began to rise in waves of death.

Ship against ship the Thracian stormwind shattered us,

and gored and split, our vessels, swept in violence

of storm and whirlwind, beaten by the breaking rain,

drove on in darkness, spun by the wicked shepherd's hand.

But when the sun came up again to light the dawn,

we saw the Aegean Sea blossoming with dead men,

the men of Achaea, and the wreckage of their ships.

Agamemnon - V:405

She left among her people the stir and clamor

of shields and of spearheads,

the ships to sail and the armor.

She took to Ilium her dowry, death.

She stepped forth lightly between the gates

daring beyond all daring. And the prophets

about the great house wept aloud and spoke:

"Alas, alas for the house and for the champions,

alas for the bed signed with their love together.

Here now is silence, scorned, unreproachful.

The agony of his loss is clear before us.

Longing for her who lies beyond the sea

he shall see a phantom queen in his household.

Her images in their beauty

are bitterness to her lord now

where in the emptiness of eyes

all passion has faded."

Agamemnon - V:370

They have the stroke of Zeus to tell of.

This thing is clear and you may trace it.

He acted as he had decreed. A man thought

the gods deigned not to punish mortals

who trampled down the delicacy of things

inviolable. That man was wicked.

The curse on great daring

shines clear; it wrings atonement

from those high hearts that drive to evil,

from houses blossoming to pride

and peril. Let there be

wealth without tears; enough for

the wise man who will ask no further.

There is not any armor

is gold against perdition

for him who spurns the high altar

of Justice down to the darkness.

Agamemnon - V:220

But when necessity's yoke was put upon him

he changed, and from the heart the breath came bitter

and sacrilegious, utterly infidel,

to warp a will now to be stopped at nothing.

The sickening in men's minds, tough,

reckless in fresh cruelty brings daring. He endured then

to sacrifice his daughter

to stay the strength of war waged for a woman,

first offering for the ships' sake.

Agamemnon - V:35

May it only happen. May my king come home, and I

take up within his hand I love. The rest

I leave to silence; for an ox stands huge upon

my tongue. The house itself, could it take voice, might speak

aloud and plain. I speak to those who understand,

but if they fail, I have forgotten everything.

Agamemnon - Opening

SCENE: Argos, before the palace of King Agamemnon. The Watchman, who speaks the opening lines, is posted on the roof of the palace. Clytamestra's entrances are made from a door in the center of the stage; all others, from the wings.

(The Watchman, alone.)

I ask the gods some respite from the weariness

of this watchtime measured by years I lie awake

elbowed upon the Atreidae's roof dogwise to mark

the grand processionals of all the stars of night

burdened with winter and again with heat for men,

dynasties in their shining blazoned on the air,

these stars, upon their wane and when the rest arise.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

1953 by The University of Chicago

Agamemnon: Copyright 1947 by Richmond Lattimore

All rights reserved. Published 1953

Printed in the United States of America

All rights of performance, professional and amateur, are strictly reserved. Requests for permission should be addressed to the publisher.

Oresteia

Behind the personal motivations in the two first dramas of the trilogy, we can, if we choose, discern a conflict of related forces: of the younger against the elder generation; of male against female; of the Greek against barbarian. As the gods step out of the darkness, where, before, they could be reached only in fitful visions of the prophetic mind, and take their place on the stage, they personify there general forces, and, because they are divine and somewhat abstract, they can carry still further dimensions of meaning. The Furies are older than Apollo and Athene, and, being older, they are childish and barbarous; attached to Clytamestra as mother, they are themselves female and represent the woman's claim to act which Clytamestra has sustained from the beginning; in a Greek world they stand for the phase of pre-Hellenism, the dark of the race and of the world; they have archaic uprightness and strictness in action, with its attendant cruelty; they insist on the fact against the idea; they ignore the justifications of Orestes, for the blood on his hands means far more then the reasons why the blood is there. Apollo stands for everything which the Furies are not: Hellenism, civilization, intellect, and enlightenment. He is male and young. He despises cruelty for the fun of cruelty, and the thirst for blood, but he is as ruthless as the Furies. The commonwealth of the gods -- therefore the universe -- is in a convulsion of growth; the young Olympians are fighting down their own barbaric past.

Amasa

Amasa is Amasa's name. Maybe because he is dark, maybe because he was born on a new moon day (amavasya), the name Amasa has stuck to him.

'Who's Amasa?' enquired the headman. 'That's him. The orphan boy that lives there with Kuriyayya. That's him.' The headman was astonished. 'My, when did he grow up so?' Before his eyes, Amasa'a Tiger Dance came dancing its many and wondrous dances.

Translated from Kannada by A. K. Ramanujan and Many Shetty

Legacy of a Divided Nation - pg. 31

Colonial knowledge created and perpetuated myths and conjured up stereotypical images of peoples and countries as part of an imperial design of fortifying the ideological edifice of the Empire. Therefore, much of the knowledge and understanding derived from experience in the field was not reflected in concrete political decisions or translated into constitutional decrees. In the constitutional plans, which broadly reflected the colonial assumptions about Indian society, the Mapilla Muslim appeared indistinguishable from Kipling's sturdy Pathan; the Urdu-speaking landed elite of Awadh were no different from the Tamil-speaking merchant brethren; E. M. Forster's Cambridge friend Syed Ross Masood was cast in the same mould as a karkhandar (artisan) in Delhi's old city; Shias and Sunnis, Bohras and Khojas, the Barelwis, the Deobandis and the Ahl-i Hadith were all considered part of pan-Indian Islam.

Legacy of a Divided Nation - pg. 21

I regard the followers of Islam not as a religious collectivity, homogenous and structured, but as a disparate, differentiated and stratified segment of society. I locate their histories and contemporary experiences in the 'Indian environment' (to borrow Aziz Ahmad's phrase) and not in relation to the so-called world of Islam, which is far removed from the imagination of most Muslims. I therefore examine the dynamics of living in a broadly democratic and secular ethos, and highlight an emerging pattern of pragmatic engagement with the social, political and economic processes. My concern is with the matter-of-fact narration of those forces that promote or retard this process rather than with discovering mysterious 'essences' that prevent 'Indianisation' or 'integration' into the 'national mainstream'.

Legacy of a Divided Nation - pg. 11

I am proud of being an Indian. I am a part of the indivisible unity that is Indian nationality. I am indispensable to this noble edifice and without this splendid structure of India is incomplete. I am an essential element which has gone to build India. I can never surrender this claim.

Legacy of a Divided Nation - pg. 10

Scores of writers have described the corporate identity of the towns and the largely cordial interaction of the mixed Hindu and Muslim populations. In Ahmed Ali's Twilight in Delhi, Rahi Masoom Reza's Aaadha Gaun, Attia Hosain's Sunlight on a Broken Column, or Intizar Husain's Basti, the parallel worlds of, say, Bhagatji and Abba Jan in the novel, of Hindu mythology and Muslim legend and lore, could exist in reality and not only in the writer's fancy.

Twilight in Delhi - pg. 24

'She is beautiful, Bari, very beautiful,' Asghar said. 'She is graceful as a cypress. Her hair is blacker then the night of separation, and her face is brighter than the hours of love. Her eyes are like narcissi, big and beautiful. There is nectar in their whites and poison in their blacks. Her eyesbrows are like two arched bows ready to wound the hearts of men with the arrows of their lashes. Her lips are redder than the blood of lovers, and her teeth look like pearls studded in a row .... I tell you she is beautiful.'

Twilight in Delhi - pg. 23

Asghar said 'No' to his friend's query and sat down on the parapet, immersed in thought. The sun was setting and the western horizon was dyed a dirty red for the atmosphere was not clear and the dust and the smoke of engines far away had made the air dirty and black. Flocks of pigeons rose from house-tops and were lost in the toneless colours of the darkening sky. Far and wide wherever the eye could see, houses stretched for miles, their roofs and walls dim with dust and years. Here and there some new house was being built, and its scaffoldings looked hazy and dim. On one side the long low hills stretched, rugged and dark in the hazy distance, one dreary line of monotonous rocks. On the other side the ugly Clock Tower jutted its head towards the sky, and by its side the dull red building of the Town Hall looked drab. Wild pigeons circled and towered above the two buildings abd, beating their wings for a while, settled down on the roof of the Hall and in the crevices of the Tower. The Jama Masjid looked diminutive and shrunk, and its red-stone plinth and the marble domes all looked grim in the austere light.

Suddenly in the midst of this dreary scene was flung a stone. A moazzin from a nearby mosque raised his voice, calling the faithful to the evening prayer. Other moazzina called from the other mosques. As their voices were nearing an end there rose on the wind the voice of Nisar Ahmad, for Asghar' mohallah was not far away from where he sat. His resonant voice came bringing peace and rest, and a sense of the transience of life, that all that we do is meaningless and vain. Asghar sat listening to the azaan until it died away, leaving a sense of silence and a buzzing sound in the ears.

Twilight in Delhi - pg. 21

As he came into the by-lane a strong gust of hot wind blew dust into his eyes. A small cyclone formed itself, and particles of dust, stray bits of paper and feathers rose in the air circling and wheeling, rising up above the house-tops in a spiral, and as the force of the cyclone died down they descended limply, fluttering and tumbling back towards the earth. Somewhere nearby two women were quarrelling inside a dilapidated house:

'O God, give me death. I am tired of this life ....'

Twilight in Delhi - Opening

PART I

The night is dark, the waves rise mounatain high,

And such a storm is raging!

What do the pedestrians know of my plight moving

Upon the shore that's safe and dry?

HAFIZ

1

NIGHT envelops the city, covering it like a blanket. In the dim starlight roofs and houses and by-lanes lie asleep, wrapped in a restless slumber, breathing heavily as the heat becomes oppressive or shoots through the body like pain. In the courtyards, on the roofs, in the by-lanes, on the roads, men sleep on bare beds, half naked, tired after the sore day's labour.

To Laurence Brander

and

the memory of my parents

Copyright 1940, 1966, 1984, 1991, 1994 by Ahmed Ali

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, or television review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

First published by the Hogarth Press, London, 1940

First published as New Directions Paperbook 782 in 1994.

Manufactured in the United States of America

New Directions Books are printed on acid-free paper

Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Limited

New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

by New Directions Publishing Corporation,

80 Eight Avenue, New York 10011

Sunlight on a Broken Column - Closing

Asad's voice called, "Laila, where are you?"

I got up quickly, wiping my eyes as his tall, thin figure was silhouetted at the door.

"Laila," he said, blinking at the shadows, "what have you been doing so long in this empty house?"

"I have been waiting for you, Asad. I am ready to leave now."

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 294

Chapter Six

THERE was a fountain at one end of the garden which had been our delight when, as children, we had flirted with the spray from the jets of water that spurted from the mouths of two marble fish coiled round each other. It was not aesthetically pleasing, but my grandfather had bought it because fish were the emblem of the Province.

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 253

No one took them seriously. The smooth-spoken, superior Ghulam Ali could not be associated with such crudity. The servants were obviously indulging their innate love of the dramatic.

idea: dialogue based servant assault story

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 243

I was sitting in the veranda of my room drying my hair with my back to the sun. Winter was slipping gently towards summer and the air was losing its invigorating crispness. The flowers in the garden were beginning to look weary.

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 233

Uncle Hamid said with heavy sarcasm, "This Muslim League in which you are so interested, I have heard it called communal and reactionary by nationalist Muslims. Certainly most of its leaders -- and many are my friends -- are of the kind you would call 'reactionary', according to your political theories."

Saleem flushed, "I believe the Congress has a strong anti-Muslim element in it against which the Muslims must organise. The danger is great because it is hidden, like an iceberg. When it was just a question of fighting the British the progressive forces were uppermost; but now that power is to be acquired, now the submerged reactionary elements will surface. Muslims must unite against them."

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 230

NO one seemed to talk any more; everyone argued, and not in the graceful tradition of our city where conversation was treated as a fine art, words were loved as mediums of artistic expression, and verbal battles were enjoyed as much as any delicate, scintillating, sparkling display of pyrotechnic skill. It was as if someone had sneaked in live ammunition among the fireworks. In the thrust and parry there was desire to inflict wounds.

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 195

I tried to look attentive as he went on. " I found them most instructive this afternooon. They brought home to me why our Province is known for its culture, and our hometown for its nuances of courtesy and grace. Nowhere else could the impossible, acrobatic feat have been performed of stabbing one in the back right under one's nose! And with such charm, humility and poetry that the stabber and the stabbed both appeared to be accepting a gracious favour from each other. I had a lesson in practical politics, which makes all one's theoretical studies seem like the pipe-dreams of opium eaters."

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 174

I wondered about the dead whose graves we had come to visit, whose stream of life flowed in us and through us. They had been kept alive by generations that respected their traditions. Did our alien thoughts and alien way of living push them into oblivion? Or was it final release for them and freedom for the living?

Everything in those days of my years ended with a question mark.

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 146

The terraced houses enclosing the lawns and gardens were freshly painted too, their golden-yellow colour relieved by touched of white on mouldings and pillars. An aura of romance still clung to them though they were now merely the town houses of Taluqdars whereas they had once sheltered the beauties of the Royal harem, and the King was said to have walked across their roofs shaded by a flight of pigeons. The two elaborate gates leading into the quadrangle were still decorated with the emblem of the Kings of Oudh -- two arched fish in relief.

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 140

Naseer's life was shaped by his ambition. Everything about him was precise, weighed and balanced by what he thought was 'correct'. layer upon layer of good qualities, when unwrapped, revealed nothing but ambition -- the core of his being.

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 120

New furnishings and decorations altered the rooms, changing them from friends to acquaintances. I missed the ghostliness of the drawing-room. It had had a personality, gloomy and grotesquley rich, reflecting one of Baba Jan's eccentricities.

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 99

They were much poorer than others in the family. Zainab's father was lazy and content with the rent he collected from his small portion of inherited land. He was short with a round paunch and cheeks that seemed like hald-filled balloons. His beard was red, his hair was white and his voice was like scraping wires.

All day he sat outside the door of his house on a staring bed, smoking his hookah and gossiping, but was galvanized into action whenever vast quantities of food had to be cooked. He was asked to supervise the cooks and organise the kitchens for every feast in the vast tribal network of the family. The more guests there were the happier he was; counting them in hundreds sent him into a state of ecstasy. He moved along the bubbling cauldrons like a magician.

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 88

In the city the past attacked the present, and the future was lost in conflict.

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 59

Once again Kariman, the bangle-seller, found herself welcome. Fat and eternally laughing she rolled along under the weight of the large wicker basket she carried on her head. When she squatted on the floor and pulled away the red cloth from her basket, the light danced and glittered and lay within bangles of every colour, warm and passionate, cool and delicate, silk spun, heavy and fluted, gold-banded, gold-speckled bangles, for tiny wrists and fat wrists. Her fat fingers gently coaxed delicate bangles over the least flexible of hands to fit tightly round the wrist. It took time, but what was time for but to gossip, to joke, to choose circlets of coloured glass for us and then the maid-servants.

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 26

Jumman in anger seemed a stranger. His dark face, with its thick moustache in contrast to his cropped head, was made gentle by large dark eyes that held no challenge. He wore a thick silver bangle on each wide wrist, and a gold ring in one ear. His loin-cloth, white and spotless, was drawn high above his bony knees, because he stood long hours in the tank washing clothes, beating them against the titled, corrugated board with a steady strong rhythm of breath and movement.

Sunlight on a broken column - pg. 16

Inside the glass shivered, and the door opened. I turned quickly in embarrassment towards Zahra, but she had not noticed me looking at myself. She was too full of some personal excitement which shone in her eyes and quickened her movements. Her eyes were large, slanting and protruded slightly, and she emphasised them with the line of kajal drawn outwards, dark and long at the corners. She used them to ask favours and to attract sympathy. They drew attention away from her commonplace nose, her greedy mouth. I thought they squinted inwards slightly, and no wonder because she saw everything through herself.

Lucknow: The Last Phase of an Oriental Culture - pg. 36

It is said that after Raja Ramchandra had conquered Ceylon and completed his term of exile in the wilderness, and when he had honoured the status of kingship by adopting its form, he gave this region as a reward to his devoted brother Lachman [Lakshman], who had accompanied him on his travels/ To commemorate the latter's stay, a village was built on a high hill overlooking the river which since that day has been known as Lachmanpur. The hill was called Lachman Hill and in it was a very deep cave with a well of which no one could estimate the depth. People said it went down as far as Shesh Nag. This idea gave impetus to religious feeling and Hindus, inspired by faith, would go there to sprinkle water and offer flowers.

Lucknow: The Last Phase of an Oriental Culture - Opening

1

Faizabad and the Early History of Avadh:

Burhan ul Mulk and the Predecessors of the Avadh Dynasty

It is unlikely that anyone will question the statement that the late court of Avadh was the final example of oriental refinement and culture in India.

in memory of Late Raja of Mahmudabad

Translated and edited by E. S. Harcourt and Fakhir Hussain

The Victim

It is the fifth day today. I have developed an unbearable backache because of continuous attendance at the bedside of my mother.

---

I held my hand over her nostrils to feel her breath and found that she had breathed her last. Our eyes went dry with sorrow. My mother was an unwept and unsung victim!

Voss - Closing

"Voss did not die," Miss Trevelyan replied. "He is there still, it is said, in the country, and always will be. His legend will be written down, eventually, by those who have been troubled by it."

"Come, come. If we are not certain of the facts, how is it possible to give the answers?"

"The air will tell us," Miss Trevelyan said.

By which time she had grown hoarse, and fell to wondering aloud whether she had brought her lozenges.

Voss - pg. 437

Judd was feeling his way with his hands.

"Well, you see, if you live and suffer long enough in a place, you do not leave it altogether. Your spirit is still there."

"Like a god, in fact," said Colonel Hebden, but laughed to show his skepticism.

Voss - pg. 429

The doors and windows were standing open, and the blue night was pouring in. Two little boys, with scrubbed party faces had fallen asleep upon an upright sofa, but their dreams were obviously filled with an especial bliss.

Voss - pg. 414

Moonlight was of doubtful benefit when it came, because all night the spirits of the dead were with him. The thin soul of Turner was hanging like a possum, by its tail, from a tree. There was a cracking of sticks and whips by Mr. Angus, who would rise up very close in a huge, white, blunt pillar of flurry light. The boy thought he would not be able to endure it, and was pouring sand upon his head. When daylight came, his eyes were turned up, and the rims of his eyelids staring outward, in a kind of fit. But he soon recovered in the heat of the morning, and continued eastward, talking to himself of what he had seen.

Voss - pg. 407

"Mr. Voss is already history."

"But history is not acceptable until it is sifted for the truth. Sometimes this can never be reached."

Voss - pg. 386

Voss heard the sucking of fingers beside the fires, as the blacks drowsed off into silence, deeper, closer, their own skins almost singed upon the coals.

Voss - pg. 382

As if to rot were avoidable. By moving. But it was not.

"We rot by living," he sighed.

Grace lay only in the varying speeds at which the process of decomposition took place, and the lovely colours of putresence that some souls were allowed to wear. For, in the end, everything was of flesh, the soul elliptical in shape.

Voss - pg. 370

Towards the end of the afternoon, when the rim of the horizon had again grown distinct, and forms were emerging from the dust, they seemed to have arrived at the farther edge of the plain, from which rose an escarpment. Slowly approaching its folds of grey earth, the party was at length swallowed by a cleft, furnished with three or four grey, miserable but living trees, and, most hospitable sight of all, what appeared to be an irregular cloth, of faded green patchy plush.

All the animals became at once observant. Moisture even showed in the dry nostrils of the dragging horses, whose dull eyes had recovered something of their natural lustre. Little velvet sounds began to issue out of their throats.

Voss - pg. 336

Over the dry earth he went, with his springy, exaggerated strides, and in this strange progress, was at peace and in love with his fellows. Both sides were watching him. The aboriginals could have been trees, but the members of the expedition were so contorted by apprehension, longing, love, or disgust, they had become human again. All remembered the face of Christ that they had seen at some point in their lives, either in churches or in visions, before retreating from what they had not understood, the paradox of man in Christ, and Christ in man. All were obsessed by what could be the last scene for some of them. They could not advance farther.

Voss - pg. 334

"Ah, Palfreyman," said Voss, "you are humble. And humility is humiliating in men. I am humiliated for you."

Voss - pg. 331

In the course of the assault, the faces of all those concerned began to wear an expression of abstraction. In the lyrical grasslands through which they had lately ridden, they had sung away what was left of their youth. Now, in their silence, they had even left off counting their sores. They had almost renounced their old, wicker bodies. They were very tired at sunset. Only the spirit was flickering in the skull. Whether it would leap up in a blaze of revelation, remained to be seen.

Voss - pg. 327

Palfreyman wished that he could have employed himself in some such easy, physical way, and in so doing, have rediscovered a purpose. There comes a moment when an individual who is too honest to take refuge in the old illusion of self-importance is suspended agonizingly between the flat sky and the flat eart, and prayer is no more than a slight gumminess on the roof of the mouth.

Voss - pg. 325

So satin sighed, lozenges were discreetly sucked, and the scented organ meandered through the melodious groves of flowers.

Voss - pg. 324

The young woman, whose eyelids were turned to buckram, was writing in her red room. She wrote:

... It would seem that the human virtues, except in isolated, absolved, absurd, or oblivious individuals are mythical. Are you too, my dearest, a myth, as it has been suggested? ...

Voss - pg. 267

"In the beginning I used to imagine that if I were to succeed in describing with any accuracy some thing, this little cone of light with the blurry edges, for instance, or this common pannikin, then I would be expressing all truth. But I could not. My whole life had been a failure, lived at a most humiliating level, always purposeless, frequently degrading. Until I became aware of my power. The mystery of life is not solved by success, which is an end in itself, but in failure, in perpetual struggle, in becoming."

-- Frank Le Mesurier

Voss - pg. 255

There was an air of peace at that camp, since rain had drowned many doubts. Thick, turbulent, yellow water was now flowing in the riverbed. Green, too, was growing in intensity, as the spears of grass massed distinctly in the foreground, and a great, indeterminate green mist rolled up out of the distance. Added to the gurgle of water, were the thousand pricking sounds of moist earth, the sound of cud in swollen cheeks of cattle, and sighs of ravaged horseflesh that looked at last fed and knowing. There was the good scent of rich, recent, greenish dung. Over all this scene, which was more a shimmer than the architecture of landscape, palpitated extraordinary butterflies. Nothing had been seen yet to compare with their colours, opening and closing, opening and and closing. Indeed, by the addition of this pair of hinges, the world of semblance communicated with the world of dream.

Voss - pg. 187

The dome of silence was devoid of all furniture, even of a throne. So he began pulling logs together, smashing sticks, crumbling scrub, and was building their first fire. Sympathy, brilliance, warmth did not, however, immediately leap forth, only a rather disappointing flame. It was a very human fire. Walking up and down, its maker was overcome by the distance between aspiration and human nature.

Voss - pg. 177

In the heat, after the men had left to muster, Mr. Judd was proceeding methodically. He had a scrap of crumpled paper, on which he would make his own signs. There was a stub of lead pencil in his mouth. One of his thumbs had been badly crushed by a sledge-hammer long ago, and had grown, in place of a nail, a hard, yellow horn. Now, as he worked, he experienced a sense of true pride, out of respect for what he was handling, for those objects, in iron, wood, or glass, did greatly influence the course of earthly life. He could love a good axe or knife, and would oil and sharpen it with tender care. As for the instruments of navigation, the mysticism of figures from which they were inseparable made him yet more worshipful. Pointing to somewhere always just beyond his reach, the lovely quivering of rapt needles was more than that of ferns. All that was essential, most secret, was contained for Judd, like his own spring-water, in a nest of ferns.

Voss - pg. 175

The simplicity of the clay-coloured landscape was very moving to the German. For a moment everything was distinct. In the foreground some dead trees, restored to life by the absence of hate, were glowing with flesh of rosy light. All life was dependent on the thin lips of light, compressed, yet breathing at the rim of the world.

Voss - pg. 172

Such was the predicament of Palfreyman on one particularly white night. Unable to sleep, he had passed the time reviewing houses in which he had lived, minor indignities he had suffered, and one tremendous joy, a white eagle fluttering for a moment on the branch of a dead tree and almost blotting out the sky with the span of its wings.

Voss - pg. 169

About a hundred of these animals had gathered on the farther bank of a second waterhole, where they were climbing and slithering on the hulks of a fallen trees, stretching their necks to pull at the fronds of their live leaves, scratching at remote pockets of their bodies with the tips of their horns, skull-bashing, or ruminating dreamily. As the horsemen approached, the goat-mind was undecided whether to stay or run. Several did remain, and were staring up, their lips smiling, looking right into the faces of the men, even into their souls beyond, but with expressions of politeness.

Voss - pg. 165

At his host's side, on the rudimentary veranda, which was all splinters, just as it had been split, stood the German, also in disguise. Blackened and yellowed by the sun, dried in the wind, he now resembled some root, of dark and esoteric purpose. Whereas the first man was composed of sensual forms, intended to be touched, flesh to be rubbed against flesh, it would not be presumed to use the second except in a moment of absolute necessity, and then with extreme caution. He stood there moistening his lips, and would have repudiated kinship with other men if it had been offered. In the presence of almost every one of his companions, and particularly in the company of Brendon Boyle, he was drawn closer to the landscape, the seldom motionless sea of grass, the twisted trees in grey and black, the sky ever increasing in its rage of blue; and of that landscape, always, he would become the centre.

Voss - pg. 163

"To peel down to the last layer," he yawned. "There is always another, and yet another, of more exquisite subtlety. Of course, every man has his own obsession. Yours would be, it seems, to overcome distance, but in much the same way, of deeper layers, of irresistible disaster. I can guarantee,: he said, stabbing the table with two taut fingers, "that you will be given every opportunity of indulging yourself to the west of here. In stones and thorns. Why, anyone who is so disposed, can celebrate a high old Mass, I do promise, with the skull of a blackfeller and his own blood, in Central Australia."