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VANKA
“The young fir trees, shrouded in hoarfrost, stand motionless, waiting to see which of them is to die.”

Before the waves from the first stroke of the bell congealed in the air, a second was heard, and immediately after it a third, and the darkness was filled with an incessant, trembling sound.

Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of
relationship both with him who produced, or is producing, the art, and
with all those who, simultaneously, previously or subsequently, receive
the same artistic impression.

Before the waves from the first stroke of the bell congealed in the air, a second was heard, and immediately after it a third, and the darkness was filled with an incessant, trembling sound.

Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of
relationship both with him who produced, or is producing, the art, and
with all those who, simultaneously, previously or subsequently, receive
the same artistic impression.

There exists an art canon, according to which certain productions favoured by our circle are acknowledged as being art,—Phidias, Sophocles, Homer, Titian, Raphael, Bach, Beethoven, Dante, Shakespear, Goethe, and others,—and the æsthetic laws must be such as to embrace all these productions.

The broken flower drooped over Ben’s fist and his eyes were empty and blue and serene again as cornice and façade flowed smoothly once more from left to right; post and tree, window and doorway, and signboard, each in its ordered place.

So while Dilsey held the horse Luster put a splint on the flower stalk with a twig and two bits of string and gave it to Ben.

And damn You, too,” he said, “See if You can stop me,” thinking of himself, his file of soldiers with the manacled sheriff in the rear, dragging Omnipotence down from His throne, if necessary; of the embattled legions of both hell and heaven through which he tore his way and put his hands at last on his fleeing niece.

Then Ben wailed again, hopeless and prolonged. It was nothing. Just sound. It might have been all time and injustice and sorrow become vocal for an instant by a conjunction of planets.

I aint doin nothin to him,” Luster said. “Mr Jason skeered him, dat’s
whut hit is. He aint kilt Miss Quentin, is he?

. . . his voice ceased, ebbed, left him staring at his mother with eyes that for an instant were quite empty of anything. It was as though his eyes were holding their breath, while his mother looked at him, her face flaccid and querulous, interminable, clairvoyant yet obtuse.

The day dawned bleak and chill, a moving wall of grey light out of the
northeast which, instead of dissolving into moisture, seemed to
disintegrate into minute and venomous particles, like dust that, when
Dilsey opened the door of the cabin and emerged, needled laterally into
her flesh, precipitating not so much a moisture as a substance partaking
of the quality of thin, not quite congealed oil.

It’s a curious thing how no matter what’s wrong with you, a man’ll
tell you to have your teeth examined and a woman’ll tell you to get
married.

Prohibition’s a fine thing. Used to be they’d come in Saturday with just
one pair of shoes in the family and him wearing them, and they’d go down
to the express office and get his package; now they all go to the show
barefooted, with the merchants in the door like a row of tigers or
something in a cage, watching them pass.

Let it wash a man’s crop out of the ground year after year, and them up there in Washington spending fifty thousand dollars a day keeping an army in Nicaragua or some place.

So when I looked around the door the first thing I saw was the red tie he had on and I was thinking what the hell kind of a man would wear a red tie.

. . . but every time I took that letter out something would come up. They were all in town for the show, coming in in droves to give their money to
something that brought nothing to the town and wouldn’t leave anything
except what those grafters in the Mayor’s office will split among themselves,

. . . lying neither asleep nor awake looking down a long corridor of grey halflight where all stable things had become shadowy paradoxical all I had done shadows all I had felt suffered taking visible form antic and perverse mocking without relevance inherent themselves with the denial of the significance they should have affirmed thinking I was I was not who was not was not who.

i think you are too serious to give me any cause for alarm you wouldn’t have felt driven to the expedient of telling me you have committed incest otherwise and i i wasnt lying i wasnt lying and he you wanted to sublimate a piece of natural human folly into a horror and then exorcise it with truth and i it was to isolate her out of the loud world so that it would have to
flee us of necessity and then the sound of it

. . . lying neither asleep nor awake looking down a long corridor of grey halflight where all stable things had become shadowy paradoxical all I had done shadows all I had felt suffered taking visible form antic and perverse mocking without relevance inherent themselves with the denial of the significance they should have affirmed thinking I was I was not who was not was not who.

Well, bud,” he said, looking at me, “I’ll be damned if you dont go to a
lot of trouble to have your fun. Kidnapping, then fighting. What do you
do on your holidays? burn houses? I

The bird whistled again, invisible, a sound meaningless and profound,
inflexionless, ceasing as though cut off with the blow of a knife, and
again, and that sense of water swift and peaceful above secret places,
felt, not seen not heard.

. . . and suddenly the acrimony, the conflict, was gone from their voices, as if to them too it was as though he had captured the fish and bought his horse and wagon, they too partaking of that adult trait of being convinced of anything by an assumption of silent superiority. I suppose that people, using themselves and each other so much by words, are at least consistent in attributing wisdom to a still tongue,

They all talked at once, their voices insistent and contradictory and impatient, making of unreality a possibility, then a probability, then an incontrovertible fact, as people will when their desires become words.

Purity is a negative state and therefore contrary to nature. It’s nature is hurting you not Caddy and I said That’s just words and he said So is virginity and I said you dont know. You cant know and he said Yes. On the instant when we come to realise that tragedy is second-hand.

. . . they have an affinity for evil for supplying whatever the evil lacks in itself for drawing it about them instinctively as you do bedclothing in slumber fertilising the mind for it until the evil has served its purpose whether it ever existed or no_

At the corner two bootblacks caught me, one on either side, shrill and raucous, like blackbirds. I gave the cigar to one of them, and the other one a nickel. Then they let me alone. The one with the cigar was trying to sell it to the other for the nickel.

I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

I know I’m nothing but a burden to you.” Mother said. “But I’ll be gone
soon. Then you will be rid of my bothering.”

“Hush.” Father said.