HEART OF DARKNESS

"I have wrestled with death.  It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine.  It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary.  If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be"--Heart of Darkness

Mother Superior to aspiring nuns: "Remember, you can very easily cheat us, your sisters, but you can never cheat yourself, or God"--The Nun's Story

I just finished reading Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for the Classic Book Club.  It has an inchoate, existential greatness.  (On the first page of the second chapter I noticed a quotation within a quotation within a quotation!)

Wednesday night I screened Fred Zinnemann's The Nun's Story with the History Discussion Group.  It's an emotionally powerful character study, with Audrey Hepburn at her best. (Part of it takes place in the Congo, which made it a good match for our earlier discussion.) Moira thought it picked up when the Mother Superior told her to fail her exam!  I liked the moment when she promised her father she'd make him proud but he said, "I don't want to be proud of you, I want you to be happy." I could imagine my own father saying something like that.

Last night I joined the Movie Meetup group to see a special screening of the famous Elvis '68 TV special. (It was the 41st anniversary of his death, which I remember hearing of on the radio.) I'd seen it several times before, but it's still great fun. Too bad about Elvis in the '60s:  instead of making all those stupid movies he should have been on television!

I've started digging up the potatoes.  They're pretty good this year.

Thanks to John Snow for sending me a copy of Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha! (He noticed the earlier post where I said I wanted to read it.)