Under the Volcano

by Malcolm Lowry

The dishonest mass rationalisation of motive, justification of the common pathological itch. Of the motives for interference; merely a passion for fatality half the time. Curiosity. Experience—very natural … But nothing constructive at bottom, only acceptance really, a piddling contemptible acceptance of the state of affairs that flatters one into feeling thus noble or useful!”

A glass, fortunately empty, fell to the floor and was smashed.

“I love hell. I can’t wait to get back there. In fact I’m running, I’m almost back there already.”

Yvonne knew where she was now, but the two alternatives, the two paths, stretched out before her on either side like the arms—the oddly dislocated thought struck her—of a man being crucified.

He was safe here; this was the place he loved—sanctuary, the paradise of his despair.

When he had striven upwards, as at the beginning with Yvonne, had not the “features” of life seemed to grow more clear, more animated, friends and enemies more identifiable, special problems, scenes, and with them the sense of his own reality, more separate from himself?

yes, the pilferer of meaningless muddled ideas out of which his rejection of life had grown,

like those peaks of his life conquered one after another before this greatest ascent of all had been successfully, if unconventionally, completed.