Saturday, February 27, 2016

A Fine Skyblue Day: February 26, 2016


Dew Pond at Monk's House
26 February 1935
     A very fine skyblue day, my windows completely filled with blue for a wonder.  Mr. Riley has just mended them.  And I have been writing & writing & re-writing the scene by the Round Pond.  What I want to do is reduce it all so that each sentence though perfectly natural dialogue has a great pressure of meaning behind it.  And the most careful harmony & contrast of scene – the boats colliding &c – has also to be arranged.
(D4 282)
Dappled Walk in Kensington Gardens


A lady, fashionably dressed with a purple feather dipping down on one side of her hat, sat there sipping an ice. The sun dappled the table and gave her a curious look of transparency, as if she were caught in a net of light; as if she were composed of lozenges of floating colours. Martin half thought that he knew her; he half raised his hat. But she sat there looking in front of her; sipping her ice. No, he thought; he did not know her, and he stopped for a moment to light his pipe. What would the world be, he said to himself--he was still thinking of the fat man brandishing his arm--without "I" in it? He lit the match. He looked at the flame that had become almost invisible in the sun. He stood for a second drawing at his pipe. Sara had walked on. She too was netted with floating lights from between the leaves. A primal innocence seemed to brood over the scene. The birds made a fitful sweet chirping in the branches; the roar of London encircled the open space in a ring of distant but complete sound. The pink and white chestnut blossoms rode up and down as the branches moved in the breeze. The sun dappling the leaves gave everything a curious look of insubstantiality as if it were broken into separate points of light. He too, himself, seemed dispersed.
The Years ( 229)

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