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Mary Webb

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“Era un uomo forte, il che a volte equivale a dire un uomo poco incline alla bontà, perché per essere buoni spesso bisogna allontanarsi dalla propria strada. Infatti, quando la gente mi parla di questo o di quel grand'uomo, io penso subito: “Se ha trovato il tempo per arrivare così in alto, a chi sarà stata sottratta la gioia per la sua gloria? Su quanti vecchi e su quanti bambini sono passate le ruote del suo carro? A quali nozze non è andato, a quali funerali non ha pianto, per trovare il tempo di arrivare tanto in alto?”

“She was a being who needed joy. Having joy, she could triumph over the most desperate physical ills. But when joy flickered and went out, then she remembered the grave. Now, as she went softly over the bridge and began to climb the woods, joy seemed fled forever. “She looked round her in a kind of terror, for she had come to the moment, which all sensitive people must reach at some time, when the soul perceives simultaneously the life of man—its small comforts, its upholstery of everyday—and the infinite; when it asks, bemused and anxious, ‘Which is the dream?’ They cannot both be true, it seems, for they are in flat contradiction. Yet daily life is true. There it is, with its duties and meals and wordy meetings; with its sweetness of affectionate glances and homely jests. That is no dream. Yet, when the beloved is dead, the daily life shrinks and withers; the infinite presses in. There it is, with all its indifferent stars, fearfully real, utterly unknown. With this intrusion of the infinite there come all the strange instincts of the spirit that have no part in daily life. These also are no dream. So there the soul stands, browbeaten and stunned by antithesis, murmuring, ‘Which is true? Is anything true?”