Quote of the Day
Nov. 13th, 2009 06:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
randy_byersYOU MAY, PERHAPS, have wondered why a man so full of human failings, and set in so unheroic a mould as Master Nathaniel Chanticleer should have been cast for so great a role. Yet the highest spiritual destinies are not always reserved for the strongest men, nor for the most virtuous ones.
But though he had been chosen as Duke Aubrey's deputy and initiated into the Ancient Mysteries, he had not ceased to be in many ways the same Master Nathaniel of old -- whimsical, child-like, and, often, unreasonable. Nor, I fear, did he cease to be the prey of melancholy. I doubt whether initiation ever brings happiness. It may be that the final secret revealed is a very bitter one ... or it may be that the final secret had not yet been revealed to Master Nathaniel.
And, strange to say, far from being set up by his new honours, he felt oddly ashamed of them -- it was almost as if he was for the first time running the gauntlet of his friends' eyes after having been afflicted by some physical disfigurement.
-- Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist (1926)
But though he had been chosen as Duke Aubrey's deputy and initiated into the Ancient Mysteries, he had not ceased to be in many ways the same Master Nathaniel of old -- whimsical, child-like, and, often, unreasonable. Nor, I fear, did he cease to be the prey of melancholy. I doubt whether initiation ever brings happiness. It may be that the final secret revealed is a very bitter one ... or it may be that the final secret had not yet been revealed to Master Nathaniel.
And, strange to say, far from being set up by his new honours, he felt oddly ashamed of them -- it was almost as if he was for the first time running the gauntlet of his friends' eyes after having been afflicted by some physical disfigurement.
-- Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist (1926)
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Date: 2009-11-14 03:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-14 03:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-14 05:03 am (UTC)So what edition do you have?
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Date: 2009-11-14 03:48 pm (UTC)