Status Updates From حلقات زحل

7. Dunwich heath – Marsh Acres, Middleton – A Berlin childhood – Exile in England – Dreams, elective affinities, correspondences – Two strange stories – Through the rainforest

First bit of tenderness comes from Anne Beresford. It is most welcome even if it is but a dream. Possibly, imagination is where we need to turn to for comfort. All the rest remains saturnal grit and dust…

…one of the chief difficulties of writing consisted of thinking, with the tip of the pen, solely of the word to be written, whilst banishing from one‘s mind the reality of what one intends to describe. (p. 186)

Perhaps we all lose our sense of reality to the precise degree to which we are engrossed in our own work, and perhaps that is why we see in the increasing complexity of our mental constructs a means for greater understanding, even while intuitively we know that we shall never be able to fathom the imponderables that govern our course through life. (p. 182)

No last sigh, no last words were to be heard, nor the last despairing plea: Lend me a looking-glass; if that her breath will mist or stain the stone, why then she lives. No, nothing. Nothing but dead silence. (p. 174/175)

6. The bridge over the Blythe – The Chinese court train – The Taiping rebellion and the opening of China – Destruction of the garden of Yuan Ming Yuan – The end of Emperor Hsien-feng – The Disaster Empire Tz’u-hsi – Mysteries of power – The town beneath the sea – Poor Algernon