Tag: Lytton Strachey

The blind eat many a fly

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski2 Comments

My name is Peeping Tom—
caught in the little drama
of that insular open-air museum
unwilling to admit it punches above its weight,
I can’t imagine calling myself anything else
after a few weeks of reading The Letters
of Lytton Strachey—and yet even a subaltern
yearns to be fond of something
beyond the mathematics of conduct,
where to simply live would be nothing
but stating the obvious (we try to warm ourselves
by the soul’s residual heat, only such a fireplace is no more—
we once replaced it with a radiator).
But if life has no inherent meaning,
it’s up to me to invent one for myself—
a cup of chilled hemlockshake should suffice.

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Rien que des plumes

Published on by Maciej ModzelewskiLeave a comment

With a vague idea of the age of winnocence,
Mr Honk stumbled upon the most delightful insult:
strange creatures with a few feathers
where brains should be—and it only took it a century
to reach his bookshelf.

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Conversations

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I find reading The Letters of Lytton Strachey a great deal of pleasure, and yet it is like listening to a telephone conversation where all you can hear is the man standing in front of you with the receiver in his hand. For that reason, I look back on reading the correspondence between Stanisław Lem and Sławomir Mrożek with all the more nostalgia. It has been a solid ten years since I last held this voluminous tome in my hands. Perhaps it’s time to return once again to their wit and wisdom.

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The horizons

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‘Travelling is a fraud,’ said Lytton Strachey, and all I can say to that is, ‘What a wonderful sentiment!’ For I would rather cultivate the apathy of prolonged departing in my study than placate the ever-ardent fellow sightseers. But that’s just me, so feel free to elevate your carbon footprint at every opportunity so that we can all enjoy the peak of the Anthropocene. As the French proverb goes, Les voyages forment la jeunesse—and so does your local library.

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Simple life

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Charles Travelyan and his wife live in the country. They rise at six.
While Charles is shaving, his wife reads Ibsen aloud to him,
and while she’s doing her hair, he reads Bernard Shaw aloud to her.
They work till twelve, when they have a light vegetarian lunch;
they then walk over ploughed fields till six, when they have a light
vegetarian dinner. After dinner Charles Travelyan reads aloud
for an hour and a half, and at eight they go to bed.
This is supposed to be the simple life, but my private view is
that Charles Travelyan’s one object in doing it is to save money,
as he’s the heir to forty thousand pounds a year.*

And, as then, so now, there is nothing like simple life
with a six million pounds sterling price tag—in today’s currency—
to while away the time in the country.

*Adapted from a letter by Lytton Strachey to Leonard Woolf, dated June 13th, 1905, as found in The Letters of Lytton Strachey, edited by Paul Levy.

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