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“One of Horace’s Odes—translated by Dryden. It well expresses what I—what I’m trying to instill into my own poem.”
“Descended from an ancient line . . .” Ah, Hesper was too young to know the subtle comfort of that, but she might have listened. He turned the page to the last stanza, reading to himself. For me secure from Fortune’s blows Secure of what I can not lose In my small pinnace I can sail Contemning all the blustering roar; And running with a merry gale With friendly stars my safety seek, Within some little winding creek And see the storm from shore. That was the way to take life, in contemplation and serenity.
Your painting is Avant-Garde, I think. You paint impressions of reality as you see it, not what you think you should see or what others have seen. There is a very young man in Paris, Claude Monet, does the same. But unlike our departed critic, I do not say, study the French or study anyone. I like that you paint simple things. I like that you use brutal color and even that you distort line if you see it like that. “Now that we have the photograph, there is no more need for exact representation in painting, and we may forget all but art’s two functions. These, interpretation and true emotion, I
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As you got older it took a mighty bad thing to seem tragic, or even exasperating; more and more you learned you couldn’t run life or even people, just sit back and be amused.
Sooner or later it came to most people, the bitter knowledge that nobody needed them any more, but to Hesper wandering around the honeycomb of rooms in her old house, there came further and more melancholy doubts. Had she ever in the past accomplished anything worth doing in a lifetime of clutchings and strivings?
But people didn’t change much inside, while their bodies did. The only thing that really vanished was passion. It was a pity other emotions did not vanish with it. Yearning and regret and the capacity for humiliation.
She listened to the music of the ripples on the beach, and the plantive mewing of the seagulls, and thought what quiet treasures of the senses age brought in return for the passion it removed. Mauve smoke drifted toward her on the northwest breeze, perfuming the salt air with the smell of burning leaves. She had never realized what a lovely smell that was before. Perhaps there was nothing in the world so rewarding as tranquil awareness.
she had achieved a true serenity, born of the years’ determined practice of it.
“Phebe’s andirons. They mean home, and even if the house had burned, they couldn’t have burned. Because they’re strong. Do you understand that, Carla? ‘A most sturdy courage to endure.’ That’s what really matters. Do you see, dear?” She did not hear the girl’s answer, but she did not need to, for it seemed to her that the little room became illumined with a golden light. She knew the light came from the house, and from the sea outside, and from beyond the sky that covered them all. But it seemed to her that the light flowed brightest of all from the ever-replenished lantern that is passed down
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