When the Count is talking to Sophia, whose mother Nina has disappeared, he says: "No matter how much time passes, those we have loved never slip away from us entirely." In the novel the Count is under house arrest in a hotel in Moscow. He befriends a girl, Nina, who gives birth to Sophia. During the Soviet purges Nina leaves Moscow to follow her husband who is banished to Siberia and she disappears. Before she left, Nina entrusted Sophia to the Count. This is the context for the Count's quote. (A very good book, incidentally.)
Another quote from Iris Murdoch's The Sacred and Profane Love Machine. "How insanely obsessed he was even Harriet, who cared so much to find out his thoughts, had not the faintest idea of. Of course bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved, and later forgotten when the bereaved on recovers." P. 40. The first half of the sentence is clearly true but is it "later forgotten?" Perhaps the time since Joanne's death is too short for me to forget, but, will I ever?
HAPPY CORN! Yesterday when I visited one of my corn fields it was dying of thirst. The other field is 8 miles away and has a few little showers of a tenth of an inch or so...it's thriving. Last night the dryer field got 2.25" rain and the other 1.6". My friend, the late Ted Thompson, always said "it rains 5 minutes before it's too late." However, Ted farmed in southern Minnesota where that was probably true. I know it wasn't always true in South Dakota in the '40s and '50s when I was a boy. Corn is in the pollinating stage now when moisture is critical. Some of the commercial corn was showing some signs of stress. Soybeans, unlike corn, are more capable of waiting for rain. Both crops are benefiting from subsoil moisture from last year's excessive rain.
Takk for alt
Al
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| 4 of my Noble Academy scholars outside during a fire drill. |
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