Boris Pasternak

The rain was the first detail in the sketch to stop Serezha. He transferred this detail from an octavo to a quarto-sized sheet, and begin to amend and erase in an attempt to arive at the desired lucidity. In places, he penned words that did not exist in the language. He allowed them to stay temporarily on the paper in the hope that they might, later, guide him through more immediate torrents of rainwater into that sort of colloquial speech, which originated from the intercourse of enthusiasm and usage. He believed that these runnels, recognised and accepted by all, would flow into his memory; and their anticipation dimmed his eyes with tears as if he wore a pair of incorrectly fitted spectacles.

If he had not been sitting, like every writer, at an angle to the table, with his back to both the entrances into the room, or if he had turned his head for the moment to the right, he would have died from fright. Anna stood in the doorway. She vanished, but not at once. Retiring a step or two from the theshold, she lingered in sight and close proximity just as long as she judged it neccesary to preserve a balance between faith and superstition. She did not wish to tempt fate either by deliberate delay or blind haste. She was dressed in her outdoor clothes. In her hand she held a tightly furled umbrella because, in the interval, she had not severed her connexion with the outside world and had a window in her room. Moreover, when she was about to descend to Serezha, she very sensibly glanced at the barometer which indicated stormy weather. Forming like a cloud behind Serezha's back, she glittered whitely and smokily in a sunset beam of dazzling intensity, which shot out beneath the grey and lilac storm cloud that pressed down on the neighbouring garden. The torrents of light dissolved Anna as well as the parquet floor, which curled corrosively beneath her like vapour. From two or three movements by Serezha, Anna, as in the Game of Kings, guessed both his trouble and its lifelong incorrigibility. After seeing him move the cushion of his fist across his eye, she turned away, gathered her skirt and, crouching as she walked, in a few long and powerful strides tiptoed out of the classroom. Once in the corridor, she increased her pace a little and dropped her skirt, and this she did while biting her lips and as noiselessly as before.

- The Last Summer

John Cale

Never win and never lose
There's nothing much to choose
Between the right and wrong
Nothing lost and nothing gaiend
Still things aren't quite the same
Between you and and me

I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep a close watch on this heart of mine

I still hear your voice at night
When I turn out the light
And try to settle down
But there's nothing much I can do
Because I can't live without you
Any way at all

I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep a close watch on this heart of mine

- I Keep A Close Watch (Music For A New Society)

Angus Wilson

And then came the crackling, whistling thudding sound of an explosion that filled the universe. I pushed Martha face down on the grass and threw myself on top of her. There followed in quick succession four more such dreadful sounds but farther away from us; and then a vast whistling, rushing wind. We lay still on the ground, waiting as it seemed to me for hours. I held Martha to me stroking her arms. Against the shrieking and howling of all the captive beasts and birds, I could hear Mrs Purrett quietly crying behind me. At last here and there people were getting to their feet. in the distance ambulance and fire bells were clanging, and there were shouts and cries in the streets. I got up slowly as though I must take the world by surpriseif I were to survive. Martha lay on the ground bruised and shocked. Whatever had fallen, must have been far off, yet blast had wrecked and twisted Zoo buildings; the Old Zoo was in flames and from it came the agonizing screams and roars of hippos, rhinos, zebras, apes and trumpeting elephants. The roof had gone from the eagle house and high above it great condors, vultures and golden eagles were circling and spiralling up into the sky. The trees were filled with chatering parakeets and among the beds of broken bruised flowers lay the little bodies of a hundred multi-coloured tropical birds; for the aviary had been shattered into a thousand pieces. Here and there men were writhing on the turf. In the floodlight the pools of blood stared in technicolour red against an emerald grass. A hundred yards from me lay the body of the boy from the snake house, his head nearly severed by a great sliver of grass. There above us on the top of the bronze lion that crowned the lion house was Sir Robert Falcon, doubled up with pain, but still wildly shouting, blown on high by some freak of blast, whole though bruised and shaken.

In that next half hour, like all the rest of London, we worked like beavers to repair our dam against a tide that any minute would engulf us and all our works forever. Firemen, staff, wives, all worked like navvies. the wounded were taken in ambulances. Injured animals were destroyed. Fire had spread too far to save any part of the Old Victorian Zoo and in it died most of the giraffes, rhinos, zebras, deer and elephants crammed in by Bobby to make his Roman holiday. Two wounded hippos broke their way down into the canal and we could see them, lashing the bloodied water for a while, until Strawson's assistant picked them off with a gun and they sank to send a great tide of mud spilling over the banks. The insect house was a hopeless wreck. Sanderson, tears in his eyes, came to assure me that we need not fear the poisonous spiders or any other venemous insects among those that were now crawling or flying in the ruins.
'I had them destroyed when you told me,' he said. 'In a way I'm glad I did it if only because they were dead before this awful thing happened.'

- The Old Men At The Zoo

W Somerset Maugham

It was impossible to start at so late an hour, and so it was not till next day soon after dawn that he set out. He arrived at Taravao, and for the last time tramped the seven kilometres that let to Ata's house. The path was overgrown, and it was clear that for years now it had remained all but untrodden. It was not easy to find the way. Sometimes he had to stumble along the bed of the stream, and sometimes he had to pushthrough shrubs, dense and thorny; often he was obliged to climb over rocks in order to avoid the hornet-nests that hung on the trees over his head. The silence was intense.

It was with a sigh of relief that at last he came upon the little unpainted house, extroadinarily bedraggled now and unkempt; but here too was the same untolerable silence. He walked up, and a little boy, playing unconcernedly in the dust in the sunshine, started at his approach and fled quickly away: to him the stranger was the enemy. Dr Coutras had a sense that the child was watching him from behind a tree. the door was wide open. He called out, but no one answered. He stepped in. He knocked at a door, but again there was no answer. He turned the handle and entered. The stench that assailed him turned him horribly sick. He put his handkerchief to his nose and forced himself to go in. The light was dim, and after the brilliant sunshine for a while he could see nothing. Then he gave a start. He could not make out where he was. He seemed on a sudden to have entered a magic world. He had a vague impression of a great primeval forest and of naked people walking beneath the trees. Then he saw that there were paintings on the walls.

'Mon Dieu, I hope the sun hasn't affected me', he muttered. A slight movement attracted his attention, and he saw that Ata was lying on the floor, sobbing quietly.
'Ata', he called. 'Ata.'
She took no notice. Again the beastly stench almost made him faint, and he lit a cheroot. His eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and now he was seized by an overwhelming sensation as he stared at the painted walls. He knew nothing of pictures, but there was something about these that extroadinarily affected him. From floor to ceiling the walls were covered with a strange and elaborate composition. It was indescribably wonderful and mysterious. It took his breath away. it filled him with an emotion which he could not understand or analyse. He felt the awe and the delight which a man might feel who watched the beginning of a world. It was tremendous, sensual, passionate; and yet there was something horrible there too, something which made him afraid. It was the work of a man who had delved into the hidden depths of nature and had discovered secrets which were beautiful and fearful too. It was the work of a man who knew things which it is unholy for men to know. There was something primeval there and terrible. It was not human. It brought to his mind vague recollections of black magic. It was beautiful and obscene.
'Mon Dieu, this is genius.'
The words were wrung from him, and he did not know he had spoken.

Then his eyes fell on the bed of mats in the corner, and he went up and he saw the dreadful, mutilated, ghastly object which had been Strickland. he was dead. Dr Coutras made an effort of will and bent over that battered horror. Then he started violently, and terror blazed in his heart, for he felt that someone was behind him. It was Ata. he had not heard her get up. She was standing at his elbow, looking at what he looked at.
'Good Heavens, my nerves are all distraught', he said, 'You nearly frightened me out of my wits.'
He looked again at the poor dead thing that had been man, and then he started back in dismay.
'But he was blind.'
'Yes; he had been blind for nearly a year.'


- The Moon And Sixpence

Karel Capek

Wealthy England has amassed the treasures of the whole world in her collections; none too creative herself, she has carted away the metope of the Acropolis and the Egyptian colossi of porphery or granite, the Assyrian bas-reliefs, knotty plastic works of ancient Yucatan, smiling Buddhas, japanese wood-carvings and lacquer-work, the pick of continental art and a medley ofsouvenirs from the colonies: iron-work, fabrics, glass, vases, snuff-boxes, book-bindings, statues, pictures, enamel, inlaid escritoires, Saracen swords, and heaven alone knows what else; perhaps everything in the world that is of any value.

I now should assuredly be very learned about various styles and cultures; I should relate something about the stages in the development of art; in my head I should sort out and distribute all this material, which is here exhibited for wonderment and instruction. but instead of this I have rent my garment, and I ask: Where is the perfection of man? How dreadful that it is everywhere; how awful a discovery to find the perfection of man even at the very beginning of existence; to find it in the formation of the first stone arrow; to find it in a Bushman drawing; to find it in China, in Fiji and in ancient Nineveh and in every place where man has left a memory of his creative activities. I saw so many things, and I could have chosen; very well, then, I will tell you that I do not know whether man is more perfect, more advanced or more attractive when shaping the first urn than when decorating a splendid Portland vase; I do not know which is more perfect: to be a cave-man, or to be an Englishman in the West End; I do not know which is the loftier and divine art: to paint a portrait of Queen Victoria on canvas or the portrait of a penguin with one's fingers in the air, as is done by the Aborigines of Terra del Fuego. I tell you, this is a dreadful thing; dreadful is the relativity of culture and history; nowhere behind us or before us is there a point of rest, of an ideal, of the finish and perfection of man; for it is everywhere and nowhere, and every spot in space and time where man has set up his work is unsurpassable. And now I cannot tell whether a portrait by Rembrandt is more perfect than a dancing mask from the Gold Coast; I have seen too much. We, too, must equal Rembrandt or a mask from the Gold or Ivory coast; there is no progress, there is no "above" or "below"; there is only an unending new creativeness. This is the only lesson to be learnt from the history, cultures, collections and treasures of the whole world: create like savages, create perpetually; at this spot, in this moment, the acme of perfection of human work is to be created; it is necessary to mount as high as fifty thousand years ago or as in the Gothic Madonna, or as in that stormy landscape by Constable. if there are ten thousand traditions, there is no tradition at all; nothing can be selected from all-abundance; the only thing that can be done is to add to it something previously non-existent.

If you search in the London collections for ivory carvings or embroidered tobacco pouches, you will find them; if you search for the perfection of human work, you will find it in the Indian museum and the Babylonian gallery, in the Daumiers, Turners, and Watteau's, or in the Elgin marbles. But then you leave this accumulation of all the world's treasures and you can ride for hours and miles on the top of a bus from Ealing to East Ham, and from Clapham to bethnal Green; and you will scarcely find a place where your eye could derive pleasure from the beauty and lavishness of human work. Art is what is deposited behind glass in galleries, museums and in the rooms of rich people; but it does not move about here in the streets, it does not twinkle from the handsome cornices of windows, it does not take up its stand at the street-corner like a statue, it does not greet you in a winsome and monumental speech. I do not know: perhaps after all it is only Protestantism which has drained this country dry in an artistic respect.

- Letters From England

J L Carr

By now the rioters had rallied to throw back the police who (lacking the excellent early training of my new friend) had fled in less than good order. Even their superintendent abandoned his loud-hailer ('Hold firm you lads at the front') and took to his heels until halted by a new platoon bussed up from Handsworth, a notably tough lot recruited in the Black Country. These advanced menacingly, their first wave banging upon plastic shields whilst following ranks held theirs above their heads - an interesting and impressive recreation of the Roman Army's testudo.

But clashing dustbin lids, the yobs still came on until, like medieval armies, both were locked in hand to hand combat.
And then I spied Matthew.
It was his custom to lead the choir in procession down the main aisle, then through the west door, out round the south side's exterior and thence back into the vestry. Now, emerging from the porch, he was brought face to face with his erupting mission-field. And halted in astonishment. But for no more than a moment. Turning to wrest the ornate Sir Ninian Comper-designed processional cross from Old Father Time (his Verger) and holding it on high, he plunged downstairs into the heat of battle.
Then, when he had buffeted and bashed a way to the middle of the road, like a lollipop man he raised a free hand to halt the police whilst presenting his cross at the other lot. It was the most dramatically stupid act of valour I shall ever witness.

I was not the only one to gawp. Hubbub and bricks diminished and a great silence reigned. (If there was ever a time for the Angel of Mons to reappear, this was it.) Then he lifted up his voice and cried passionately, "My house is the House of God and ye have made it a den of thieves." Which was hardly fair on the city police.
But this bizarre interlude was momentary. In fact, the screams and drumming rose to a new pitch of violence because, not unnaturally, this pronouncement had incensed both sides. And down he went and once more the battle was joined over him.
But then there was a most extroadinary intervention. the rest of the Procession, who, in great dread of spirit had huddled in the porch, thus penning in their following congregation who suddenly burst out like a cork from a bottle and poured tumultuously down the steps to their pastor's succour and, under covering fire from a rain of hymns and prayer books hurled by choir boys, set about both mobs.

This flank attack (as students of our island story, recalling Colonol Ireton's ambushed dragoons at Naseby, will understand) confused the issue and both lots drew back in baffled disorder. Thus with Father Time dragging one ankle and the Choirmaster the other, Matthew was pulled clear of no-man's-land and laid out under the porch with a beautifully forgiving smile smeared across his theatrically bloody face.
"Hetty, dear," he murmered, "be kind enough to mention to Mrs Gilpin-Jones that I shall be late for supper and will she keep it in the oven. I shall remove it and take care to turn off the gas before going to my room."

- What Hetty Did