jeudi 28 juin 2007
mardi 26 juin 2007
vendredi 22 juin 2007
mercredi 20 juin 2007
Mon Petit Jardin
Le Dragon de Pluie (5 pages) paraîtra en niveaux de gris dans Mon Petit Jardin, collectif thématique édité par les Journées de la Bande Dessinée indépendante, organisées en octobre à Royère-de-Vassivière (23).
mardi 19 juin 2007
lundi 18 juin 2007
La Colline des Rêves (3)
"False tracks again, hopeless efforts, spoilt folios thick about me till by some chance or another, I know not how, the right notion was given me, and I wrote the seventh and last chapter in a couple of nights. Once more the thought of the old land had come to my help ; the book was finished. It had occupied from first to last of the labour of eighteen months.
I then began to send the manuscript round to the publishers. The result would have melted the heart of the sourest cynic. To those hard men of business, as they are sometimes called, time was nothing, kindness everything. They wrote me, one after another, long letters in small writing on large quarto paper. They all implored me, as I loved them, not to publish this book because, as they explained, it was so poor and weak and dull that its publication would ruin what little reputation I had gained before.
(...)
'The Hill of Dreams' was published in 1907, ten years after it had been finished. "
I then began to send the manuscript round to the publishers. The result would have melted the heart of the sourest cynic. To those hard men of business, as they are sometimes called, time was nothing, kindness everything. They wrote me, one after another, long letters in small writing on large quarto paper. They all implored me, as I loved them, not to publish this book because, as they explained, it was so poor and weak and dull that its publication would ruin what little reputation I had gained before.
(...)
'The Hill of Dreams' was published in 1907, ten years after it had been finished. "
La Colline des Rêves (2)
"And here I would say that to the best of my belief, I was brought to a dead stop precisely because I had explored the way and laid it out so thoroughly. I have told how I rolled the 'notion' up and down and round about in my mind ; how I planned and plotted and blew up the rocks and cut away the brushwood and felled the trees, so that there should be no difficulties in the track ; and there was the mischief of it. For the truth is, that for me at any rate literature is always an exploration. The relish of it, the delight of it are indissolubly bound up with the sense of penetrating into a new world and an undiscovered region, of standing on some minor peak in Darien and looking on worlds that no eye has ever seen before. And this must be the sense of the scene as the actual words are written, as the ink flows from the pen -- or else there is nothing written that matters two straws. And in the affair of this particular book, I had taken such pains in exploring the ground that then I came to write it, there was nothing left to explore. Here were no miracles, no mysteries, no buried treasures, no unlooked for wonders. Everything was known, everything familiar, all seemed quite devoid of significance.
Still, that book had got to be written, and was going to be written. "
Still, that book had got to be written, and was going to be written. "
dimanche 17 juin 2007
La Colline des Rêves
"In the year 1895 I was at length certain, or almost certain, that I was a man of letters. I had been, if I may put the matter thus familiarly, for more than twelve years 'on the job.' In '83 I had written a little book called 'The Anatomy of Tobacco', chiefly as a counter-irritant to loneliness and semi-starvation. In '84 I had translated the Heptameron of Margaret de Navarre, while '85 and '86 were devoted to the concoction of 'The Chronicle of Clemendy' a volume of medieval tales. Another translation, a version of 'Le Moyen de Parvenir' by Beroalde de Verville -- his name is more beautiful than his book -- occupied the leisure of my evenings somewhere about '88 and '89, the days being given to the rendering of the 'Memoirs of Casanova' (twelve volumes) into the English tongue. "
(...)
"It merely remained to discover what sort of book I was going to write.
I took this problem out with me on solemn walks in dimmest Bloomsbury, then a region most fit to the contemplations of a meditative man. I had just moved into chambers at 4 Vernlam Buildings, Gray's Inn, and so, by way of Theobald's Road, I had easy access to the old, grave squares where life moved quietly and peaceably as if it were the life of a little country town. Grey square opened into grey square, silent street into silent street ; all was decorous and remote from the roar of traffic and the rush of men. But few people ascended the steps of the few old houses, but few descended them ; the local tradesmen, all old-established, old-fashioned, steady and good, called for orders and purveyed their wares in a sober way ; Bloomsbury was silence and repose ; and in its grey calm I pursued my anxious studies, and submitted my problems to myself. "
vendredi 15 juin 2007
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