Edmund Wilson

LUCIDITY FORCE EASE
The thin strains of linkéd sweetness, with now and then a note frailly sour of the harp and the violin – some old musical-comedy tune I remembered from my college days - seemed to me even in this false and elfin echo to keep more that was human and charming than the pace of the newer dance music had ever allowed it to possess; and as I glanced at Daisy, gazing out like a charming good-natured child, at the sights of the passing shore, I was touched with sentimental revery.

Ce devait être quelque vieux refrain de comédie musicale datant de mes années d’université; ses échos douceâtres avec de temps en temps la note un peu aigre d’une harpe ou d’un violin semblaient, même avec cet écho faux et iréel, avoir conservé plus d’humanité et de charme que la musique de danse le plus moderne n’en pouvait suggérer. Je jetai un coup d’oeil à Daisy – elle regardait maintenant comme une gentille petite fille la rive qui défilait – et je tombai dans une rêverie sentimentale.

Les souches mince d'une douceur liée, avec de temps en temps une note frailly sure de la harpe et le violon - certaines musiques old-tune comédie Je me souvenais de mes années de collège - me semblait même dans ce échos parasites et de lutins de conserver une plus ce qui était humain et plus charmante que le rythme de la musique de danse plus récente avait jamais permis de posséder, et comme je l'ai regardé à Daisy, regardant comme un enfant charmant bonhomme, à des sites de la côte en passant, j'ai été touché par sentimentale rêverie.

Robert Briffault and the woe of foetid inheritance

But rebellion may be, after all, one of our most desirable traits. In his ground-breaking work The Mothers, British anthropologist Robert Briffault found that Western children are indeed rebellious by nature. Briffault argued that it is only when we are able to "shake off the dead hand of traditional heredity" that we reach our highest potential.

Episodes of Sublime Transubstantiation by Means of Prose

It is possible to safely and faithfully say that over the last thirty years I have recited to myself, three hundred times, often aloud, a passage from the vastly under-appreciated novel of Edmund Wilson
I THOUGHT OF DAISY:
The thin strains of linkéd sweetness, with now and then a note frailly sour of the harp and the violin – some old musical-comedy tune I remembered from my college days - seemed to me even in this false and elfin echo to keep more that was human and charming than the pace of the newer dance music had ever allowed it to possess; and as I glanced at Daisy, gazing out like a charming good-natured child, at the sights of the passing shore, I was touched with sentimental revery.
Call it sleep, call it praying; a peace mantra.
From Robert Craft's AN IMPROBABLE LIFE:
What I learned in the hospital is that the time between heartbeats varies in healthy hearts, but not in diseased ones on the verge of failure. Thus a perfectly steady heartbeat is more likely to be found in elderly, rigid bodies than in flexible young ones. The corollary of this is that fractal patterns of considerable complexity are linked to healthy heart functioning, and that when the complexity disappears, sudden death may follow.