back from hiatus?

so, I just finished Eliot's The Cocktail Party:


There is certainly no purpose in remaining in the dark
Except long enough to clear from the mind
The illusion of having ever been in the light.
The fact that you can't give a reason for wanting her
Is the best reason for believing that you want her.


It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous.
Resign yourself to be the fool you are.
That's the best advice that I can give you.
You will find that you survive humiliation.
And that's an experience of incalculable value.


We die to each other daily.
What we know of other people
Is only our memory of the moments
During which we knew them. And they have changed since then.
To pretend that they and we are the same
Is a useful and convenient social convention
Which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember
That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.

Little-known Anouilh play

GENERAL. The ideal, my friend, is the life-buoy. You're in the ocean, splashing about, doing your damndest not to drown, in spite of whirlpools and cross currents. The main thing is to do the regulation breast-stroke and if you're not a clod, never let the lifebuoy out of your sight. No one expects any more than that of you. . . .
SECRETARY. But does one ever reach the lifebuoy, General?
GENERAL. Never. But if your heart's in the right place, you never lose sight of it either. Fanatics who try a faster stroke to reach it at all costs, deluge everybody else and always finish up by drowning. . . . Do you see what I mean? . . .
SECRETARY. I am twenty years old, General. I would rather try to go fast and drown.

-Jean Anouilh, The Waltz of the Toreadors

Nathalie Sarraute

"Remain silent, look at them; and right in the middle of the grandmother's illness, rise and, making an enormous hole, escape, knocking against the lacerated walls, and run shouting amidst the crouched houses standing watch all along the gray streets, flee, stepping over the feet of the concierges seated in front of their doors taking the air, run with her mouth contorted shouting incoherencies, while the concierges looked up from their knitting and their husbands lowered their newspapers to their knees, to press their gaze along the length of her back, until she had turned the corner.

Sometimes, when they were not looking at him, to try and find something that was warm and living around him, he would run his hand very gently along one of the columns of the sideboard . . . they would not see him, or perhaps they would think that he was merely "touching wood" for luck, a very widespread custom and, after all, a harmless one. When he sensed that they were watching him from behind, like the villain in the movies who, feeling the eyes of the policeman on his back, concludes his gesture nonchalantly, gives it the appearance of being offhanded and naive, to calm their apprehension he would drum with three fingers of his right hand, three times three, which is the really effectual lucky gesture."

-Nathalie Sarraute, Tropisms