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reminded D. of a hearse, rolling slowly and discreetly towards the ‘garden of peace’, the driver careful not to shake the coffin, as if the body minded a jolt or two. Hysterical women shrieked among the shrouds.
Ominous tone
would take a little time for his memory of English completely to return; he had known it very well once, but now his memories were rather literary. He tried to stand apart, a middle-aged man with a heavy moustache and a scarred chin and worry like a habit on his forehead,
D chracterization
He carried the war with him. Wherever D. was, there was a war. He could never understand that people were unaware of it.
Like Orwell in homage - life moving on seems wrong
began to tramp—up and down beside the rail—to keep warm, his head down, the deck like a map marked with trenches, impossible positions, salients, deaths: bombing planes took flight from between his eyes, and in his brain the mountains shook with shell-bursts.
War is in all he sees
Danger was part of him. It wasn’t like an overcoat you sometimes left behind: it was your skin. You died with it; only corruption stripped it from you.
War becoming who he is
bow of the boat and saw a child, wedged in a corner. He stood and looked at it. It didn’t mean a thing to him—it was like writing so illegible you didn’t even try to decipher it. He wondered whether he would ever again share anybody’s emotion. He said to it in a gentle dutiful way,
Diction of dutiful and it reveal his lack of human emotion
low gate. Taken by surprise they had nothing to say. Besides, they had never spoken to each other; they were separated by different initial letters,
Initials Medal ?
he had once had some kind of title himself, years ago, before the republic … count, marquis … D. had forgotten exactly what.
Aloof from his own life
two confidential agents wanting the same thing.
must have been taken before he went to prison, before his wife was killed, and before the air raid of December 23 when he was buried for fifty-six hours in a cellar. But he could hardly explain all that to the passport officer.
Horrible Trauma said with nonchalant tone
There was the old D.—he remembered now: it was just three years ago. He was forty-two, but a young forty-two. His wife had come with him to the studio; he had been going to take six months’ leave from the university and travel—with her, of course. The civil war broke out exactly three days later. He had been six months in a military prison—his wife had been shot—that was a mistake, not an atrocity—and then … He said, ‘You know war changes people. That was before the war.’
D's account of trauma
‘I don’t remember. One of the things which danger does to you after a time is—well, to kill emotion. I don’t think I shall ever feel anything again except fear. None of us can hate any more—or love. You know it’s a statistical fact that very few children are being born in our country.’ ‘But your war goes on. There must be a reason.’ ‘You have to feel something to stop a war. Sometimes I think we cling to it because there is still fear. If we were without that, we shouldn’t have any feeling at all. None of us will enjoy the peace.’
No hate or love, just fear
long glass window came into view; there was soft music: a voice, very hollow and deep, sang, ‘I know I knew you only When you were lonely.’ ‘Back in civilization,’ the girl said gloomily.
Choice of song is symbolic
If you win, what sort of a world will it be for people like you? They’ll never trust you—you are a bourgeois—‘I don’t suppose they even trust you now. And you don’t trust them. Do you think you’ll find among those people—the ones who destroyed the National Museum and Z.’s pictures—anyone interested in your work?’ He said gently—it was like being recognized by a State academy—‘I mean the Berne MS.’
my manuscript collection. I had nothing, of course, which was in your line—but there was an early manuscript of Augustine’s City of God …’ It was like being tempted by a devil of admirable character and discrimination. He couldn’t find an answer. L. went on, ‘I’m not really complaining. These horrible things are bound to happen in war—to the things one loves. My collection and your wife.’
Compares book collection to wife
It was worth killing a civilization to prevent the government of human beings falling into the hands of—he supposed they were called the civilized. What sort of a world would that be? a world full of preserved objects labelled ‘Not to be touched’; no religious faith, but a lot of Gregorian chants and picturesque ceremonies. Miraculous images which bled or waggled their heads on certain days would be preserved for their quaintness: superstition was interesting. There would be excellent libraries, but no new books. He preferred the distrust, the barbarity, the betrayals … even the chaos. The
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Appreciation and scholarship were dangerous things: they could kill the human heart.
kindness was something which meant nothing at all; she gave you a bun on a cold platform, offered you a lift and then left you abandoned half-way; she had the absurd mind of her class—which would give a pound note to a beggar and forget the misery of anybody out of sight. She belonged really, he thought, with L.’s lot, and he remembered his own, at this moment queueing up for bread or trying to keep warm in unheated rooms.
D.’s hand were useless; he made no attempt to hit back (his mind remained a victim of the horror and indignity of the physical conflict), and he didn’t know the right way to defend himself.
an English poet of Italian origin which had expressed a mood connected with his own dead: ‘… the beat Following her daily of thy heart and feet, How passionately and irretrievably In what fond flight, how many ways and days.’ There
infection
Sickly diction
In melodrama a secret agent was never tired or uninterested or in love with a dead woman. But perhaps L. read melodramas—he represented, after all, the aristocracy—the marquises and generals and bishops—who lived in a curious formal world of their own, jingling with medals that they awarded to each other: like fishes in a tank, perpetually stared at through glass, and confined to a particular element by their physiological needs. They might take their ideas of the other world—of professional men and working people—partly from melodrama. It was wrong to underestimate the ignorance of the ruling
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Perspective Of the republic
In a way, too, it was suitable that the future of the poor should depend upon the poor.
Now there were so many varieties of economic materialism, so many initial letters.
live was like perjury. How often they had declared that they would die within a week of each other, but he hadn’t died: he had survived prison, the shattered house. The bomb which had wrecked four floors and killed a cat had left him alive.
‘I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it. Don’t you see that if things like that happened life would be quite different? One would have to begin over again.’
Refusal to accept the truth
quixotic.
Love this word
‘You’ve got to choose some line of action and live by it. Otherwise nothing matters at all. You probably end with a gas-oven. I’ve chosen certain people who’ve had the lean portion for some centuries now.’
makes the story tragedy, not just heroics. Because in the Oxford version Oliver is reconciled, he gives Roland his death-blow by accident, his eyes blinded by wounds. The story, you see, has been tidied up to suit … But in the Berne version he strikes his friend down with full knowledge—because of what he has done to his men: all the wasted lives. He dies hating the man he loves—the big boasting courageous fool who was more concerned with his own glory than with the victory of his faith. But you can see how that version didn’t appeal—in the castles—at the banquets, among the dogs and reeds and
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Song of roland important
aren’t worth fighting for. Some day you’ll be killed. But you won’t hit back at Roland—not intentionally. The Berne MS. is all wrong there.’
The berne MS allegory for current situation
gave away unguardedly secrets of greed and envy … What could you expect on that salary? How much treachery is always nourished in little overworked centres of somebody else’s idealism.
Author's commentary of effects of poverty
The impetigo was like the relic of some shameful act from which she had never recovered. He remembered Else saying. ‘She acts like mad.’
War spreading like a disease= motif
infection.
Disease motif
was an infected man.
Infection
Rage grew in him slowly like a cancer. He began to remember phrases—‘
Diction infection
roses he swore that from now on he would be the hunter, the watcher, the marksman in the mews.
Turn of events; change of character
his old and seedy over-coat registered sickness like a cat’s fur.
Disease
‘I must introduce you,’ Dr Bellows said, ‘to our Siamese.’ He pressed D. gently onwards towards the far wall. ‘Hi es Mr D.—Dr Li.’
It was as if by the act of death she had become naturalized to his own land—a countrywoman.
Her death being a birth into their culture and war
Dr Bellows, Miss Carpenter—they were robbed of reality by their complacent safety. They must die before he could take them seriously.
Death only way for soeone to be taken seriously
Years of academic life might make one a good judge: it didn’t make one a good executioner.
every word he came alive … and the condemned must not come alive: he must be dead long before the judge passes sentence.
Speaking humanized him
Remember the Berne MS. You aren’t Roland. Don’t walk under ladders … or spill salt.’
Lok more into the connectioj between d and rolad
How was it possible for anyone to plan his life or regard the future with anything but apprehension?
Existential question
‘Ah!’ D. felt as a typhoid-carrier must feel when he finds himself among the safe and inoculated: these he couldn’t infect.
Disease motif
‘The beat … something of thy heart and feet, how passionately and irretrievably …’ He gave it up. It had seemed at the time to mean a great deal. He thought of his wife: it represented all the ignobility of life that he felt the tie weakening between him and the grave. People should die together, not apart A clock struck seven.
Meaning of the poem
leave this country free from his infection and his friends free from embarrassment, from the dangerous disclosure and the untimely reticence.
Disease
The dead were to be envied. It was the living who had to suffer from loneliness and distrust.
Envying death
