hawthorne

When Phoebe awoke—which she did with the early twittering of the conjugal couples of robins, in the pear-tree—she heard movement below stairs, and hastening down, found Hepzibah already in the kitchen. She stood by a window, holding a book in close contiguity to her nose; as if with the hope of gaining an olfactory acquaintance with its contents, since her imperfect vision made it not very easy to read them. If any volume could have manifested its essential wisdom, in the mode suggested, it would certainly have been the one now in Hepzibah's hand; and the kitchen, in such an event, would forthwith have steamed with the fragrance of venison, turkeys, capons, larded partridges, puddings, cakes, and Christmas pies, in all manner of elaborate mixture and concoction. It was a Cookery Book, full of innumerable old fashions of English dishes, and illustrated with engravings, which represented the arrangements of the table, at such banquents as it might have befitted a nobelman to give, in the great hall of his castle. And, amid these rich and potent devices of the culinary art, (not one of which, probably, had been tested, within the memory of any man's grandfather,) poor Hepzibah was seeking for some nimble little tidbit, which, with what skill she had, and such materials as were at hand, she might toss up for breakfast! (71)

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The House of the Seven Gables. Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Robert S. Levine. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006.

hawthorne

"Oh, believe me, Miss Hepzibah," said the young man quietly, "these feelings will not trouble you any longer, after you are once fairly in the midst of your enterprise. They are unavoidable at this moment, standing, as you do, on the outer verge of your long seclusion, and peopling the world with ugly shapes, which you will soon find to be as unreal as the giants and ogres of a child's story-book. I find nothing so singular in life, as that everything appears to lose its substancee, the instant one actually grapples with it. So it will be with what you think so terrible." (34)

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The House of the Seven Gables. Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Robert S. Levine. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006.

camus

What always amazes me, when we are so swift to elaborate on other subjects, is the poverty of our ideas on death. It is a good thing or a bad thing, I fear it or I summon it (they say). Which also proves that everything simple is beyond us. What is blue, and how do we think "blue"? The same difficulty occurs with death. Death and colors are things we cannot discuss. Nonetheless, the important thing is this man before me, heavy on earth, who prefigures my future. But can I really think about it? I tell myself: I am going to die, but this means nothing, since I cannot manage to believe it and can only experience other people's death. I have seen people die. Above all, I have seen dogs die. It was touching them that overhwlemed me. Then I think of flowers, smiles, the desire for women, and I realize that my whole horror of death lies in my anxiety to live. I am jealous of those who will live and for whom flowers and the desire for women will have their full flesh and blood meaning. I am envious because I love life too much not to be selfish. What does eternity matter to me. You can be lying in bed one day and hear someone say: "You are strong and I owe it to you to be honest: I can tell you that you are going to die"; you're there, with your whole life in your hands, fear in your bowels, looking the fool. What else matters: waves of blood come throbbing to my temples and I feel I could smash everything around me. (78)

Camus, Albert. "The Wind at Djemila." Lyrical and Critical Essays. Trans. Ellen Conroy Kennedy. NY: Vintage, 1968. 73-79.

bachelard

Alexander Dumas tells in his Mémoires that, as a child, he was bored, bored to tears. When his mother found him like that, weeping from sheer boredom, she said: "And what is Dumas crying about?" "Dumas is crying because Dumas has tears," replied the six-year-old child. This is the kind of anecdote people tell in their memoirs. But how well it exemplifies absolute boredom, the boredom that is not the equivalent of the absence of playmates. There are children who will leave a game to go and be bored in a corner of the garret. How often have I wished for the attic of my boredome when the complications of life made me lose the very germ of all freedom! (94)

Bachelard, Gaston. "Poetics of Space (Extract)." Ed. Neil Lench. Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Critical Theory. Routedge, 1997. 86-97.

poe

But it is in matters beyond the limits of mere rule that the skill of the analyst is evinced. He makes, in silence, a host of observations and inferences. So, perhaps, do his companions; and the difference in the extent of the information obtained, lies not so much in the validity of teh inference as in teh quality of the observation. The necessary knowledge is that of what to observe. (143)

Coincidences ten times as remarkable as this (the delivery of the money, and murder committed within three days upon teh party receiving it), happen to us every hour of our lives, without attracting even momentary notice. Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling-blocks in teh way of that class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities... (166)

Poe, Edgar Allen. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." 141-176.

poe

We sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a suprassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; thes features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. (264)

Poe, Edgar Allen. "The Fall of the House of Usher." (1839). The House of The Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Robert S. Levine. New York: Norton, 2006. 260-277.

sartre

And I—soft, weak, obscene, digesting, juggling with dismal thoughts—I, too, was In the way. Fortunately, I didn't feel it, although I realized it, but I was uncomfortable becuase I was afraid of feeling it (even now i am afraid—afraid that it might catch me behind my head and lift me up lik a wave). I dreamed vaguely of killing myself to wipe out at least one of these superfluous lives. But even my death would have been In the way. In the way, my corpse, my blood on these stones, between these plants, at the back of this smiling garden. And the decomposed flesh would have been In the way in the earth which would receive my bones, at last, cleaned, stripped, peeled, proper and clean as teeth, it would have been In the way: I was In the way for eternity.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Nausea. 1938. Trans. Lloyd Alexander. New York: New Directions, 1968.