Read Online A Writer's Notebook by W. Somerset Maugham - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: W. Somerset Maugham
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starlit night.
The changing, rosy light of dawn.
The wind, sinister and ghostly, rustled like a sightless animal through the topmost, leafless branches.
To the lover waiting for his love no sound is sadder than the tardy striking of the hours.
The lamp flickered like the last wandering glance of a man at the point of death.
A dawn would follow the long and weary night, but no light would come to his wretched heart; his soul must wander for ever in darkness, for ever in darkness, for ever.
In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.
The morning crept out of a dark cloud like an unbidden guest uncertain of his welcome.
C. G. and I looked at the sunset and he remarked that he considered sunsets rather vulgar. I, who was impressed with what I saw, felt humiliated. He told me contemptuously that I was very English. I had thought the fact rather praiseworthy. He informed me that his spirit was French; I thought it a pity in that case that he spoke it with such a British accent.
C. G. He has all the graces and all the virtues (figurativelyspeaking only, since his morals are none too good) and he prides himself on his sense of humour. To his mind the best argument you can bring in favour of a cause is that it is unpopular. He takes a singular pride in running down his country and this he takes to be an example of his breadth of mind. Ten days in Paris with Cookâs coupons have sufficed to convince him of the superiority of the French. He talks of ideal love, of Hope with a rippling laugh, and buys a harlot off the Strand for ten shillings. He explains his failures by bemoaning the age. What is there to be said for an age and country which refuses to take him at his own estimate? He wishes he had been born in ancient Greece, but heâs the son of a country doctor and there and then he would have been a slave. He despises me because I take a cold bath. He is plucked in all his exams; but he turns every humiliation into a new reason for self-esteem. He writes poetry which lacks only originality to be quite passable. He has no physical courage, and when bathing is terrified at the idea of being out of his depth. But he is proud of being a coward; he says anyone can be brave, it merely shows lack of imagination.
God goes through all the ways of the earth, ploughing the land and sowing pain and anguish, sowing from East to West.
The sumptuous gold of a summer evening.
Like the sword whose fire dried the tears in the desolate eyes of Eve.
The hothouse beauties of Paterâs style, oppressive with a perfume of tropical decay: a bunch of orchids in a heated room.
The sun was a roaring furnace, melting the massive clouds into a golden, ardent rain; and the glow was so tremendousthat one thought of some giant cataclysm in which might be forged a new and mighty world; and the Eastern clouds were the trailing volumes of smoke from the vast combustion. One could imagine the titan creators of a new world, throwing into the seething cauldron the false gods, the pomps and vanities, the thousand metals, the innumerable works of man; and with an awful silence all living things were sundered and dissipated and resolved into new, invisible, ethereal, mystical substances.
The young leaves shivering a little, voluptuously, under the quick pressure of the breeze.
My soul seemed a stringed instrument upon which the Gods were playing a melody of despair.
My heart was sad for her sake, and though I had ceased to love her, I found no consolation. A painful sense of emptiness had replaced the bitter anguish of before; and it was perhaps even harder to bear. Love may go and memory yet remain, memory may go and relief even then may not come.
The bitter waves of the sea.
The clouds sped across the sky, copper and red against the milky blue.
The heather rich with the
The changing, rosy light of dawn.
The wind, sinister and ghostly, rustled like a sightless animal through the topmost, leafless branches.
To the lover waiting for his love no sound is sadder than the tardy striking of the hours.
The lamp flickered like the last wandering glance of a man at the point of death.
A dawn would follow the long and weary night, but no light would come to his wretched heart; his soul must wander for ever in darkness, for ever in darkness, for ever.
In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.
The morning crept out of a dark cloud like an unbidden guest uncertain of his welcome.
C. G. and I looked at the sunset and he remarked that he considered sunsets rather vulgar. I, who was impressed with what I saw, felt humiliated. He told me contemptuously that I was very English. I had thought the fact rather praiseworthy. He informed me that his spirit was French; I thought it a pity in that case that he spoke it with such a British accent.
C. G. He has all the graces and all the virtues (figurativelyspeaking only, since his morals are none too good) and he prides himself on his sense of humour. To his mind the best argument you can bring in favour of a cause is that it is unpopular. He takes a singular pride in running down his country and this he takes to be an example of his breadth of mind. Ten days in Paris with Cookâs coupons have sufficed to convince him of the superiority of the French. He talks of ideal love, of Hope with a rippling laugh, and buys a harlot off the Strand for ten shillings. He explains his failures by bemoaning the age. What is there to be said for an age and country which refuses to take him at his own estimate? He wishes he had been born in ancient Greece, but heâs the son of a country doctor and there and then he would have been a slave. He despises me because I take a cold bath. He is plucked in all his exams; but he turns every humiliation into a new reason for self-esteem. He writes poetry which lacks only originality to be quite passable. He has no physical courage, and when bathing is terrified at the idea of being out of his depth. But he is proud of being a coward; he says anyone can be brave, it merely shows lack of imagination.
God goes through all the ways of the earth, ploughing the land and sowing pain and anguish, sowing from East to West.
The sumptuous gold of a summer evening.
Like the sword whose fire dried the tears in the desolate eyes of Eve.
The hothouse beauties of Paterâs style, oppressive with a perfume of tropical decay: a bunch of orchids in a heated room.
The sun was a roaring furnace, melting the massive clouds into a golden, ardent rain; and the glow was so tremendousthat one thought of some giant cataclysm in which might be forged a new and mighty world; and the Eastern clouds were the trailing volumes of smoke from the vast combustion. One could imagine the titan creators of a new world, throwing into the seething cauldron the false gods, the pomps and vanities, the thousand metals, the innumerable works of man; and with an awful silence all living things were sundered and dissipated and resolved into new, invisible, ethereal, mystical substances.
The young leaves shivering a little, voluptuously, under the quick pressure of the breeze.
My soul seemed a stringed instrument upon which the Gods were playing a melody of despair.
My heart was sad for her sake, and though I had ceased to love her, I found no consolation. A painful sense of emptiness had replaced the bitter anguish of before; and it was perhaps even harder to bear. Love may go and memory yet remain, memory may go and relief even then may not come.
The bitter waves of the sea.
The clouds sped across the sky, copper and red against the milky blue.
The heather rich with the
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