Yes, yes, yes, I know. I have pending the writing of my notes on Frankenstein. With Camus' essay at hand, the novel turned out to be crystal clear, even predictable, and more fixed to the conventions of Reason than bowed to the excess of Imagination. What a thing! Even imagination has its rules. It always had.
But as soon as I finished Mary Shelley's story, I started Dracula, written at the other end of the 19th century, in 1897. Fantastic stuff! It is gripping me like tales can only gripped kids. How many months I have been only reading in the tube (mainly, at least)! Today, instead, arrived home around 8, made a cup of coffee, and in the dim light of desk and bed lamps, amidst the fainted tickle of rain drops "without", kept reading. Like a child. It is more than 20 years ago, I kind of remember, when P. and I rolled down the streets boasting like a couple of peacocks in our 13, and were dismissed by V., who was always reading like crazy in the chamber upstairs his parent's bar. I kind of remember the day he was sitting by the window, wrapped in the skirts of the table, warmed by the heat of the brazier, reading Dracula. A king's pleasure.
The writing pace of Stoker is really nice. No point to make a more elaborate description of my opinion so far. I have felt the urgency to write this after reading Chapter 5, mainly after enjoying with ecstasy the first letters exchanged by Mina Murray and Lucy Westerna and the latter's account of her three proposals in a day: Dr. Seward, sunken in gloom spirits after her refusal ("ebb tide in appetite, cannot eat, cannot rest"), the Texan Quincey Morris and the fortunate Arthur. How beautiful is the style of Quincey! "Little girl, your honesty and pluck have made me a friend, and that's rarer than a lover (...). My dear, I'm going to have a pretty lonely walk between this and Kingdom Come. Won't you give me one kiss? It'll be something to keep off the darkness now and then". What a universal and timeless custom of honest men to offer friendship to the woman they love after being refused! Poor Dr. Seward does the same, less eloquently. Lucy relates to Mina: "he hoped I would be happy, and that if I ever wanted a friend I must count him one of my best". Oh, boy! Universal stuff.
Indeed, how similar we are to them, to those characters of that old, dusted time. The habit of writing letters, abandoned in the bottom of history, was revived by the emergence of the email, there is little doubt of it in my mind. And, despite the gap, there is something unchanged in the tone of the messages between Mina and Lucy, twenty years-old, and our own. Take as example (notice the three interrogation marks at the end): "Tell me all the news when you write (...). I hear rumours, and especially of a tall, handsome, curly-haired man???".
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS).
But as soon as I finished Mary Shelley's story, I started Dracula, written at the other end of the 19th century, in 1897. Fantastic stuff! It is gripping me like tales can only gripped kids. How many months I have been only reading in the tube (mainly, at least)! Today, instead, arrived home around 8, made a cup of coffee, and in the dim light of desk and bed lamps, amidst the fainted tickle of rain drops "without", kept reading. Like a child. It is more than 20 years ago, I kind of remember, when P. and I rolled down the streets boasting like a couple of peacocks in our 13, and were dismissed by V., who was always reading like crazy in the chamber upstairs his parent's bar. I kind of remember the day he was sitting by the window, wrapped in the skirts of the table, warmed by the heat of the brazier, reading Dracula. A king's pleasure.
The writing pace of Stoker is really nice. No point to make a more elaborate description of my opinion so far. I have felt the urgency to write this after reading Chapter 5, mainly after enjoying with ecstasy the first letters exchanged by Mina Murray and Lucy Westerna and the latter's account of her three proposals in a day: Dr. Seward, sunken in gloom spirits after her refusal ("ebb tide in appetite, cannot eat, cannot rest"), the Texan Quincey Morris and the fortunate Arthur. How beautiful is the style of Quincey! "Little girl, your honesty and pluck have made me a friend, and that's rarer than a lover (...). My dear, I'm going to have a pretty lonely walk between this and Kingdom Come. Won't you give me one kiss? It'll be something to keep off the darkness now and then". What a universal and timeless custom of honest men to offer friendship to the woman they love after being refused! Poor Dr. Seward does the same, less eloquently. Lucy relates to Mina: "he hoped I would be happy, and that if I ever wanted a friend I must count him one of my best". Oh, boy! Universal stuff.
Indeed, how similar we are to them, to those characters of that old, dusted time. The habit of writing letters, abandoned in the bottom of history, was revived by the emergence of the email, there is little doubt of it in my mind. And, despite the gap, there is something unchanged in the tone of the messages between Mina and Lucy, twenty years-old, and our own. Take as example (notice the three interrogation marks at the end): "Tell me all the news when you write (...). I hear rumours, and especially of a tall, handsome, curly-haired man???".
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS).
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