The Poet Assassinated and other stories by Guillaume Apollinaire (1984)

I was ready to be thoroughly irritated by this, but was somehow charmed. The main piece, occupying half the book, is clanking surrealism, and has all the concomitant irritants - meaninglessness, half-bakedness, terrible lack of direction and fullness, but also conversely a few inspiring mind-spurts, and cheeky playfulness. The remaining fifteen pieces are characterised much more by eccentric whimsy, and are only sporadically surreal. Some, like The Moon King (a Ludwig of Bavaria dream) and Saint Adorata (a faux-archaeological Passion) are fascinating slow bursts of soft colour in the memory. Some are a little nastier or duller. The surprise was the last story, The Case of the Masked Corporal. The title has a sub-clause: That is, The Poet Resuscitated. It acts as a summary coda. One sees it initially as standard, replete as it is with bits of concrete prose. Then it opens out into the story of the poet in the Great War, avatar of Apollinaire himself, experiencing a return of many of the characters from the stories in the book, themselves resuscitated and carrying on where they left off. It ends with the sense of the end coming; will the poet be killed in the War, or was Apollinaire aware of his own coming demise? Here he touches the frizzled edges of emotion, albeit in code.

Commonplace Book

"...She felt herself setting out in thought, reticent and proud, and bitter in a small clean way like a cat selecting its paws. But she wanted to believe that there was something fresher and deeper that came of the mind, some force of which she would demand nothing if it would only be. She wanted to believe in a language that burned black the tongue of the one who spoke and scarred the one who listened. She would demand nothing of it, but to serve it, and be humble before it. She was ready to be humbled, but adequately humbled, not by the hate that beat all night at her pillow, nor by the love that slipped off down her cheeks at night acrid into the corners of her mouth."

from Summer, a piece in Wedding Day and other stories by Kay Boyle

Commonplace Book

"'May I ask where we dine?' I inquired, endeavouring to free the skirts of my new mackintosh from the door, which had swung to (the caravan not standing perfectly level) and jammed them tightly. I did not need to raise my voice, for in a caravan even with its door and windows shut people outside can hear what you say just as distinctly as people inside, unless you take the extreme measure of putting something thick over your head and whispering. (Be it understood I am alluding to a caravan at rest: when in motion you may shout your secrets, for the noise of crockery leaping and breaking in what we learned - with difficulty - to allude to as the pantry will effectually drown them.)"

from The Caravaners by 'Elizabeth' (Chapter III)

Commonplace Book

"Truly it is an excellent thing to be able to put down one's opinions on paper as they occur to one without risk of irritating interruption - I hope my hearers will not interrupt at the reading aloud - and now that I have at last begun to write a book - for years I have intended doing so - I see clearly the superiority of writing over speaking. It is the same kind of superiority that the pulpit enjoys over the (very properly) muzzled pews..."

from The Caravaners by 'Elizabeth' (Chapter II)

Rome For Sale by Jack Lindsay (1934)

This novel stands in sharp contrast to its predecessor, which was a sprightly inventive comedy. Here Lindsay shows his mettle in historical terms, with a complex and well-tensioned understanding of the conspiracy of Catalina to overthrow the corrupt Senate in ancient Rome, and establish a dictatorship in the name of the masses. With a vast array of characters, and his very fine understanding of the workings of their minds, and the tangents of thought brought about by the historical context, one would imagine that this second novel would be a surefire amplification of his credentials. But something perhaps in his passion for the material stymies this book, or perhaps the fault lies elsewhere. The effect is a becalming. The entire first half feels like a hopping from tile to tile and back again in a vast mosaic - the narrative drive is disturbingly missing. So while there is grandness of intent, vastness of scale, depth of vision into humanity, this enormous vehicle stalls nevertheless. Only when we reach the election, intended by Catalina as the catalyst for his actions, does the fire of onward energy match the huge intent. For a good portion of the last half he keeps this up, and then a tailoff begins. The final scenes of Catalina's death in battle are, though, stirring and beautiful.

Commonplace Book

"...All at once he felt rising with gathering strength within him the stern determination to end this torturing subserviency. She had nailed him upon a cross; he was bleeding from every limb, and she watched his agony without feeling for his suffering, even rejoicing that she had had it in her power to effect so much. But he would tear himself from his deathly gibbet, leaving there bits of his body, strips of his flesh, and all his mangled heart. He would flee like a wild animal that the hunters have wounded almost unto death, he would go and hide himself in some lonely place where his wounds might heal and where he might feel only those dull pangs that remain with the mutilated until they are released by death."

from Notre Coeur by Guy de Maupassant (Chapter IX)

The Princess Sophia by EF Benson (1900)

This novel is Benson's attempt at his own spin on Ruritania, which had been made popular, to put it mildly, by the phenomenal success of Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda earlier this decade. It is Bensonian in that it is light in tone, lacking what I take to be (haven't read it yet) the serious historical element in Hope's work. Sophia is reigning in Rhodope, which roughly coincides with the bottom third of Albania, and is an inveterate gambler. After foiling a pretty unbelievable plot by her dashing but rather limited prince and her prime minister in a delightfully dramatic way, she realises that her son Leonard needs to be protected from the gambling instinct prevalent in him through simply being her child! He is sent off to Eton and then round the world on improving travels, she resumes her frequent trips to Monte Carlo on her royal yacht, and also gambles at the club she has established in the gardens of Rhodope's royal palace. One stormy night in Monte, an incognito Leonard proves himself a force at the tables, reveals himself, and manages to win the throne of their country from his mother as their highest stake! Fantastic madness, followed by an epilogue describing his benevolent reign which returns Rhodope to its former brilliance (by banning all gambling), which had been dulled by Sophia's introduction of the fascinating but morally enervating games of chance. Enormous fun, even though, in its confusion over the attractions and attenuations of gambling, it really doesn't know whether it's Arthur or Martha.