The Sea, The Sea

by Iris Murdoch

The end of life is rightly thought of as a period of meditation. Will I be sorry that I did not begin it sooner?

In food and drink, as in many (not all) other matters, simple joys are best, as any intelligent self-lover knows.

I owe my whole life to Shakespeare.

Even a middling novelist can tell quite a lot of truth. His humble medium is on the side of truth. Whereas the theatre, even at its most ‘realistic’, is connected with the level at which, and the methods by which, we tell our everyday lies.

All good dramatists and directors and most (not all) good actors are obsessed men. Only geniuses like Shakespeare conceal the fact, or rather change it into something spiritual.

My father enjoyed a certain amount of fixing and mending, but he would have liked to sit sometimes quite vacantly and watch the world drift by, only he was never allowed to.

It’s interesting, it’s a revelation, it’s so easy to frighten people, to bewilder them and persecute them and terrify them out of their wits and make their lives a misery. No wonder dictators flourish.’

You say she’s unhappy, most people are. A long marriage is very unifying, even if it’s not ideal, and those old structures must be respected.

‘That’s what mad people do, see everything as evidence for what they want to believe.’

Christ, how I wish I hadn’t done it. I was crazy. I did it partly out of hatred of you. Why the hell didn’t I keep that child. He’d have been nearly grown up by now.’

now I remembered something else which James had said. White magic is black magic. A less than perfect meddling in the spiritual world can breed monsters for other people, and demons used for good can hang around and make mischief afterwards.

Religion is power, it must be, and yet that is its bane. The exercise of power is a dangerous delight.

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause.

Time, like the sea, unties all knots. Judgments on people are never final, they emerge from summings up which at once suggest the need of a reconsideration. Human arrangements are nothing but loose ends and hazy reckoning, whatever art may otherwise pretend in order to console us.

Perhaps it is a sign of age that I am busy all day without really doing anything.

Or shall I simply sit by the fire and read Shakespeare, coming home to the place where magic does not shrink reality and turn it into tiny things to be the toys of fairies?

Had a drink with Rosina. She is thinking of entering politics. She says it is so easy to influence people by making speeches.