Too funny! Happy Easter Nancy.
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The Frozen River Book Club Friends Crossword Puzzle
Difficulty level: Easy Are you ready to test your skills?…
Quote:
“Evil is unspectacular and always human,
And shares our bed and eats at our own table.”
Jane Richmond:
Sharing this quote today in honour of our current discussion of Still Life.
“The Collected Works of W.H. Auden” is mentioned early in Still Life. Auden’s “Herman Melville” poem with the two lines, “Evil is unspectacular and always human, And shares our bed and eats at our own table.” are highlighted.
Louise Penny gave her readers a huge clue in the first chapter of Still Life, but many seem to overlook it. Why do you think it so easy to overlook that clue at the time, and what impact does it have when it’s quoted again in the last chapter?
Here’s the entire poem:
Towards the end he sailed into an extraordinary mildness,
And anchored in his home and reached his wife
And rode within the harbour of her hand,
And went each morning to an office
As though his occupation were another island.
Goodness existed: that was the new knowledge.
His terror had to blow itself quite out
To let him see it; but it was the gale had blown him
Past the Cape Horn of sensible success
Which cries: “This rock is Eden. Shipwreck here.”
But deafened him with thunder and confused with lightning:
–The maniac hero hunting like a jewel
The rare ambiguous monster that had maimed his sex,
The unexplained survivor breaking off the nightmare–
All that was intricate and false; the truth was simple.
Evil is unspectacular and always human,
And shares our bed and eats at our own table,
And we are introduced to Goodness every day,
Even in drawing-rooms among a crowd of faults;
He has a name like Billy and is almost perfect,
But wears a stammer like a decoration:
And every time they meet the same thing has to happen;
It is the Evil that is helpless like a lover
And has to pick a quarrel and succeeds,
And both are openly destroyed before our eyes.
For now he was awake and knew
No one is ever spared except in dreams;
But there was something else the nightmare had distorted–
Even the punishment was human and a form of love:
The howling storm had been his father’s presence
And all the time he had been carried on his father’s breast.
Who now had set him gently down and left him.
He stood upon the narrow balcony and listened:
And all the stars above him sang as in his childhood
“All, all is vanity,” but it was not the same;
For now the words descended like the calm of mountains–
–Nathaniel had been shy because his love was selfish–
Reborn, he cried in exultation and surrender
“The Godhead is broken like bread. We are the pieces.”
And sat down at his desk and wrote a story.
Source of this quote:
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I am certain I missed that clue on my first reading of “Still Life” and probably evne the second. But this time, I saw it immediately! Louise weaves these into the characters and seemingly mundane events so well.
Yes, I completely missed this clue as well. It seemed just like Clara was remembering some lines from the poem, as the book was in the bouquet and just happened to come to mind. But of course, we realize afterwards that this was a big hint. This being Louise’s first book, and my first read of one of her books, I didn’t realize at the time that she would add these little clever details in her stories. Now I know not to overlook anything she just “happens” to mention.
I definitely missed this clue on my first read! I had no idea when I first picked up Still Life as my very first LP read that there would be so much depth to be discovered in her writing.