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Quote by Radclyffe Hall

“How queer, this old armchair had outlived him, this old chair--' And feeling the creases in its leather, the dent in its back where her father's head had lain, she would hate the inanimate thing for surviving, or perhaps love it and find herself weeping.”

Quote by Radclyffe Hall

Work

The Well Of Loneliness

This novel delves into the complexities of personal identity and the challenges faced by individuals who do not conform to societal expectations, particularly focusing on the protagonist's struggle with her sexual identity. more

Author

Radclyffe Hall
Radclyffe Hall

Radclyffe Hall, a British poet, was born on August 12, 1880, and passed away on October 7, 1943. Her poetry is known for its unique style and profound emotional expression. more

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“I want to explain about the Catallus poem (101). Catallus wrote poem 101 for his brother who died in the Troad. Nothing at all is known about the brother except his death. Catallus appears to have travelled from Verona to Asia Minor to stand at the grave. Perhaps he recited the elegy there. I have loved this poem since the first time I read it in high school Latin class and I have tried to translate it a number of times. Nothing in English can capture the passionate, slow surface of a Roman elegy. No one (even in Latin) can approximate Catullan diction, which at its most sorrowful has an air of deep festivity, like one of those trees that turns all its leaves over, silver, in the wind. I never arrived at the translation I would have liked to do of poem 101. But over the years of working at it, I came to think of translating as a room, not exactly an unknown room, where one gropes for the light switch. I guess it never ends. A brother never ends. I prowl him. He does not end.”

“I was not meant to have to do this part alone. The teenage part. I was changing her nappies yesterday, and today I am grappling with the reflection of my failures in her too-wise eyes. I am trying to allow her to grow while simultaneously keeping her from drifting away. I want her to know life, its beauties and its complexities, I want her to take risks and make mistakes and know love as we all should, and yet those things feel too big, they are dwarfing us, she is just a baby and I really need my wife.”

“Grief is weird. Some days I can go hours without thinking about the fact that he’s gone. It wasn’t like that the first couple of months. It just changes one day, and you don’t even realize how it happened. It sneaks up so quietly, this invisible barrier that slowly stretches out the amount of time between those thoughts. And then you go, oh yeah, I’m still really sad about this”