Most of it is in the old Vintage 'autobiography of Montaigne', Andrew.
ie, assembled from scattered paras in his late essays.
My juggling is word order and idiom, and I haven't looked out the old master's
French.
At present it seems far too long - maybe you'd like to edit it down?
best from Max
The sentence you quote seems to foreshadow Beckett a bit.
He takes it to the extreme - born astride the grave, or something.
Quoting Andrew Burke <[log in to unmask]>:
> Wow, Max, I loved it, especially -
>
> With one foot in the grave,
> we still give birth to appetites.
>
> May I steal it for TRUCK? (With a short bio.)
>
>
> Andrew
>
> On 9 November 2011 09:18, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> >
> > After Montaigne
> >
> > Soon I shall have passed my fifty-sixth year
> > (him, that is - myself seventy-fourth) -
> > more than the traditional term of life!
> > Haven't there been nations that put old folk down?
> >
> > Yet still I have flurries of youthfulness
> > so bright they recreate for me
> > the feel of younger days.
> >
> > I don't run any more - it's enough that I can creep.
> > My life's not as sound and long as an oak-tree's,
> > but at work in us both is natural decay.
> >
> > I'm nearing the bottom of the cask,
> > tasting now of sediment and lees.
> > (He had his own vineyard and cellar!
> > I finish off the odd bottle of red.)
> >
> > 2
> > Lately a tooth of mine fell out - painlessly,
> > of its own accord. Well, it'd reached its use-by
> > date - as have other parts of me I won't name.
> >
> > Thus I melt and steal away from myself
> > step by step down a gentle slope.
> >
> > Perhaps before I note my sight is failing
> > I shall have reached stone-blindness.
> >
> > Is my hearing growing dull?
> > People nowadays refuse to speak up.
> >
> > 3
> > To make the soul feel how it's ebbing
> > you must press, press and press it.
> >
> > All our life has death mixed in with it.
> > Even into our growth decay slips through.
> >
> > These old portraits (his - in my case passports) -
> > here I'm twenty-five, here thirty-five.
> > Compared with this recent one,
> > in how many ways are they no longer myself!
> >
> > Before the end is reached, by how much more
> > will my looks change? By how much more
> > am I myself yet to change?
> >
> > 4
> > Lingering so long, we've tired Nature out.
> > Now she's forced to quit us. Teeth, eyes,
> > limbs, and upkeep - all left to the mercy
> > we must beg from others.
> >
> > Well, these are the laws of our being,
> > which we must suffer patiently;
> > despite all medicine - old, feeble, sick.
> >
> > What madness, to pray for one's lost youth!
> > For long journeys expect heat, gale, and flood.
> > For long years, gout, kidney-stones, sick gut.
> >
> > 5
> > No one can restore you, at best patch and prop
> > you a little, an hour or two prolonging misery.
> >
> > Mind - it's mind's privilege to rescue itself
> > from old age. I've long urged mine to this.
> >
> > Any green shoots are like mistletoe on a dead tree.
> > And when body calls, instantaneously
> > mind deserts me. I wheedle and deal with it apart -
> >
> > in vain. They're in such cahoots - though I offer mind
> > the classics, beautiful women - if body
> > comes down with colic, down comes mind too.
> >
> > 6.
> > With one foot in the grave,
> > we still give birth to appetites.
> >
> > At least I've learned to look ahead
> > no more than just one year.
> >
> > The only comfort I note in old age
> > is the deadening of cares:
> >
> > care how the world goes,
> > care for riches, knowledge,
> > health, or even myself.
> >
> > Others are studying how to speak
> > when what they should be learning
> > is eternal silence.
> >
> > 7
> > Too late to change myself, find a new course,
> > though it might enhance my life.
> > Too late for any new enjoyment.
> > (Too late to master the new iPhone.)
> >
> > Fancy a person acquiring decency so late,
> > fit to live when so little life is left!
> >
> > As I make my exit I'd gladly consign
> > to any newcomer late-won wisdom only he can apply.
> > Dinner's over, too late for mustard!
> >
> > 8.
> > For a man whose head's gone soft what use
> > is knowledge? Blessings even are no use now.
> >
> > We need no art to fall: the bottom
> > is reached of itself.
> >
> > I'm finishing off this man I am,
> > not remaking another one out of him.
> >
> > 9
> > Too late for writing and printing.
> > Whoever submits his senile mind to the presses
> > is mad if he hopes to extract anything
> > which does not stink of a man who is
> > ugly, raving and half-asleep.
> > (Present company excepted.)
> >
> >
> > Max de Richards
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > This email was sent from Netspace Webmail: http://www.netspace.net.au
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Andrew
> http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
> http://www.mullamullapress.com/QWERTY
> BLUE ROSE enovel avail. at Amazon, Smashwords and
> http://etextpress.com/books.htm
>
------------------------------------------------------------
This email was sent from Netspace Webmail: http://www.netspace.net.au
|