Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Poem 85 From “The Gardener”, 1914 Translated By The Author From

"Have you got a brook in your little heart"

by Emily Dickinson

Have you got a brook in your little heart, Where bashful flowers blow, And blushing birds go down to drink, And shadows tremble so?

And nobody knows, so still it flows, That any brook is there; And yet your little draught of life Is daily drunken there.

Then look out for the little brook in March, When the rivers overflow, And the snows come hurrying from the hills, And the bridges often go.

And later, in August it may be, When the meadows parching lie, Beware, lest this little brook of life Some burning noon go dry!

just finished the charioteer today and can't stop thinking about it, will probably start rereading it again today smh

“Goodnight and great love to you. We see the same stars.”

— George Mallory, from a letter to his wife Ruth during the 1921 Everest Reconnaissance Expedition (via archaeologicals)

i recently started reading the Well of Loneliness which is one of the books that Mary was responding to in her contemporary novels that include gay characters. i had previously just heard about it as basically this very depressing classic of gay literature that was very controversial, banned in England, etc., but i really had no idea of its literary merit, if it was actually a good book or not! i'm like 3/4 way through and i HAVE to recommend it. it's really compelling and i found it very affecting. it addresses a lot of the themes that appear in the Charioteer about the dilemma of gay life at the time, a lot of the main character's thoughts are quite reminiscent of Laurie's thoughts. i think it's a classic for a reason and worth reading.

I will definitely check this out! If it's reminiscent of Laurie, I'll probably love it! Thank you so much for the recommendation!

I wondered about the cancelled party thing too! I thought it was plausible at least because Bunny does say something about Ralph keeping Laurie a little hidden and (I think, I don't really remember) seems annoyed by this. It's not a stretch to think he'd lie about being out for the night, only to show up when he knows Laurie is there.

That said, Laurie also thinks later that Bunny isn't so much a planner as he is someone who just takes chances when they come to him. Alec hints at this too. So, I don't really know if I'm right: the level of foresight/planning that my idea of Bunny would suggest doesn't line up with the common perception of him given by at least 2 characters...honestly, Bunny (and his relationship with Ralph) always seemed odd to me. I was half-convinced the first time I read the book that Laurie was simply misjudging the situation and they weren't as serious as he imagined. I mean, Ralph never shows any real affection for Bunny in any of their scenes together! And Bunny is very weird! Their whole relationship was so weird to me lol

That Bunny car scene

Hi there @telltaleangelina I just wanted to think a bit more about the scene with Bunny and Laurie in the car scene on the back of your ask/answer.

I think you really got to the heart of it with that line ‘the practiced inflection’.  Laurie uses his intuition a lot (sometimes without even being sure what he is picking up) and it’s just such a creepy line, indicating how Bunny seamlessly adopts that tone.  Although I suppose there is an analogue with Ralph giving Bunny ‘the straight look’ for the first time back at the flat.

It suddenly occurred to me that cars are so symbolic of male power at that time, and it evokes that horrible trope of men taking women out and expecting some kind of ‘payment’.  I wonder if Bunny is just so cynical that he assumes Laurie is paying Ralph back in kind for the lift, and decides he wants a piece of the action.  Or he thinks Ralph is being ridiculously gentlemanly about Laurie and wants to bring him down to his level.

I realised the scene provides a contrast to the earlier car scene with Ralph.  I know we love the little knee touch in the 1953 version when they are parked up at the scenic spot, but to me, she took that out for a reason in the 1959.  It shows the high level of tension (not just sexual!) between them and the way both of them are being hyper-vigilant – Ralph trying very hard to judge the moment with Laurie, and Laurie trying very hard to be respectful of the fact that Ralph has a boyfriend.  And also, Laurie sits in silence to avoid attracting Ralph’s anger when he hits the traffic.  And he is so uncomfortable with being dependent on Ralph – the number of times he tries to leave the party to get the bus, and he tries it again at Bunny’s.

I also realised that it almost doesn’t matter whether Bunny would have followed through with his threat or not.  It just conjures up the horrible thought that he is used to getting what he wants, and most of the time, people don’t stand up to him.  So perhaps this is a neat way to show Laurie’s strength of character in a crisis.

The other thing that is quite disturbing, if not surprising, though, is that Laurie then plays it down with Ralph.  Partly because he fears not being believed (a bit like Alec silently taking the blame for Bunny’s gossip for a quiet life), and partly to spare Ralph’s feelings.  I realised he would be very influenced as well by the ‘no snitch’ rule in school, where telling on another boy would be considered worse than the original offence.  But it is cowardly too.  I wonder if his anger on the staircase is partly fueled by his frustration at being put in that situation, the suggestion that Ralph is so inured to that kind of behaviour that he doesn’t even notice any more.  And in a way Ralph is responsible, because even if Bunny spiked his drink, he still chose alcohol over tea.  But Laurie is also too passive.  In the end Ralph ends it with Bunny without knowing for sure what he did.  Unless he knows because Bunny has form.  In which case why is he with someone like that?  Either way, Laurie’s horrible accusations on the staircase have the ring of truth.

And finally I can’t go without mentioning that other linked car scene – Ralph kissing Laurie on the first night at the party (very heavy hint anyway) when he is dreaming about his mother kissing him!!  And Ralph sitting there having a cigarette while he waits for Laurie to wake up is so sweet.

I wonder what Alastair and Cordelia would think of Emma. I like to think there are bits of Alastair that shine through in Emma and that Jem eventually tells her about them.

“THE STRONG SHORE is my beloved And I am his sweetheart. We are at last united by love, and Then the moon draws me from him. I go to him in haste and depart Reluctantly, with many Little farewells.”

hmm, is the title "The Beautiful Cordelia" a nod to Jane Austen's "The Beautifull Cassandra"

Hello there, I would love to hear all your thoughts on 'The Last of the Wine'!

Hey, thanks for the ask! I really loved Last of the Wine! Alexias was a lovely character, and it was really interesting to watch his development and the development of his relationship with Lysis! He was so sweet in the beginning and then he became harder as the book went on; his father said that he once thought Alexias was 'too soft' to be a soldier, and I think he was right to feel that way at a certain point! His entire character progression was a trip to get through!

I absolutely loved the writing, which was beautiful as always, and there are some parts of the story I don't think I'm going to forget about anytime soon; the story of Phaedo (I cried), the moment Alexias exposes his brother and asks him 'bear no ill-will to me' (I cried), quotes like 'at Gurgos's once I lay awake considering how to kill him. But already it was too late,' 'I saw death reach out for you; and I had no philosophy,' 'if there be any god who concerns himself with the lives of men, the god himself must suffer with me,' etc. etc. It was just so good but very disturbing in some points...sometimes, you never stop to wonder why people do the things they do and only see that what has been done is evil. In a way, this is good; evil things ought to be derided as such no matter the circumstances, but in another way it is unfair and unhelpful. This is how I feel about a lot of the last third of the book: I understand why and how certain things happened, I just wish that they hadn't happened.

Something that made me laugh though and which I will think about forever are the few scenes where it's apparent Mary Renault is writing with a modern audience in mind, like the absolutely hilarious scene where Alexias is afraid of asking Xenophon if he only likes girls because he doesn't want to offend him 😭 or the scene where Alexias, assuring his dying father of vengeance, says: "Am I so base of soul as to forgive my enemies?" They're really cool scenes because they kind of play with the expectations of a modern audience and subvert common sentiments and understandings in modern culture and society; the opposite situation in the Xenophon scene would seem likelier to a modern person (especially at the time Mary Renault was writing) with Xenophon worrying about offending Alexias by asking him if he likes boys. And it's really a head-trip to read that question asked by Alexias because it's a direct contradiction to the common and widely known sentiment of forgiveness and loving your enemies within Christianity...this becomes 10x funnier 10 pages later when Alexias accidentally stumbles onto the whole point of Christianity 'God with us' 😭😭😭 I love the whole sequence of these scenes because they seem written specifically to challenge the reader; to get it through your mind that this was a foreign place and time, and these people are foreign to us; they have an understanding different from our own...but maybe not completely different at the same time.

Anyway, I don't know if this makes sense, my thoughts are kind of all over the place with this one but the tldr version of it is: I loved it! The writing was beautiful! It made me sad!