Texts for stylistic analysis “Ode to My Socks” by Pablo Neruda (translated by Robert Bly)

Mara Mori brought me a pair of socks which she knitted herself with her sheepherder's hands, two socks as soft as rabbits. I slipped my feet into them as if they were two cases knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin, Violent socks, my feet were two fish made of wool, two long sharks sea blue, shot through by one golden thread, two immense blackbirds, two cannons, my feet were honoured in this way by these heavenly socks. They were so handsome for the first time my feet seemed to me unacceptable like two decrepit firemen, firemen unworthy of that woven fire, of those glowing socks. Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptation to save them somewhere as schoolboys keep fireflies, as learned men collect sacred texts, I resisted the mad impulse to put them in a golden cage and each day give them birdseed and pieces of pink melon. Like explorers in the jungle who hand over the very rare green deer to the spit and eat it with remorse, I stretched out my feet and pulled on the magnificent socks and then my shoes. The moral of my ode is this: beauty is twice beauty and what is good is doubly good when it is a matter of two socks made of wool in winter.

“Song” by Christina Rossetti

WHEN I am dead, my dearest,

Sing no sad songs for me;

Plant thou no roses at my head,

Nor shady cypress tree:

Be the green grass above me

With showers and dewdrops wet;

And if thou wilt, remember,

And if thou wilt, forget.

 

I shall not see the shadows,

I shall not feel the rain;

I shall not hear the nightingale

Sing on, as if in pain;

And dreaming through the twilight

That doth not rise nor set,

Haply I may remember,

And haply may forget.

Alistair MacLean

Santorini

The President of the United States was no longer a young man and at half past five on that morning in the Oval Office he was showing every year of his age. The lines of care and concern were deeply entrenched in his face and the skin, beneath the permanent tan, had a greyish tinge to it. But he was alert enough and his eyes were as clear as could be expected of an elderly man who had had no sleep whatsoever that night.

'I am beginning, gentlemen, to feel almost as sorry for myself and ourselves as I am for those unfortunates in Santorini.' The 'gentlemen' he was addressing were the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Hollison of the FBI, John Heiman, the Defense Secretary, and Sir John Travers, the British Ambassador.

'I suppose I should, in all decency, apo­logize for bringing you all together at this unearthly hour of the morning, but, frankly, I have no decency left in me. I'm right at the undisputed top of my self-pity list.' He rifled some papers on his desk. 'Admiral Hawkins and his men are sitting on top of a ticking time-bomb and it seems that nature and circumstances are conspiring to thwart their every attempt to rid themselves of this canker in their midst. With his latest report I had thought that I had reached the ultimate nadir. Inevitably, 1 was wrong.' He looked sorrowfully at the deputy head of the FBI. 'You had no right to do this to me, Richard.'

'I am sorry about that, Mr President,' Hollison may well have meant what he said but the sorrow was completely masked by the expression and tone of bitter anger. 'It's not just bad news or damnably bad news, it's shattering news. Shattering for you, shattering for me, most of all shattering for the General. I still can hardly bring myself to believe it.

“Could you put us in the picture, please?''

“That shouldn't take too long. It's a most damnably ugly picture, Sir John, because it reflects badly - just how badly it's only now beginning to dawn on me — on both Americans in general and the Pentagon in particular.”

'The central figure in the scenario, of whom you have of course heard, is a certain Adamantios Spyros Andropulos who is rapidly emerging as an international criminal of staggering proportions. As you know, he is at present being held aboard the frigate Ariadne. He is an exceptionally wealthy man — I'm talking merely of hundreds of millions of dollars, it could be billions for all I so far know — and he has money, laundered money under false names, hidden away in various deposit accounts all over the world, Marcos of the Philippines and Duvalier of Haiti are, or were, rather good at this sort of thing, but they're being found out, they should have employed a real expert like Andropulos.'

'He can't be all that expert, Richard,' Sir John said. 'You've found out about him.'

'A chance in a million, a break that comes to a law agency once in a lifetime. In any but the most exceptional and extraordinary circumstances he would have taken the secret to the grave with him. That he was found out is due entirely to two things — an extraordinary stroke of luck and an extraordinary degree of astuteness by those aboard the Ariadne,

'Among his apparently countless worldwide deposits Andropulos had tucked away eighteen million dollars in a Wash­ington bank through an intermediary or nominee by the name of George Skepertzis. This nominee had transferred over a million dollars apiece to the accounts of two men registered in the bank as Thomas Thompson and Kyriakos Katzanevakis. The names, inevitably, are fictitious — no such people exist. The only bank clerk who could identify all three men had left the bank. We showed him a group of photographs. Two of them he recognized immediately but none of the photographs remotely resembled the man going by the name of George Skepertzis.

'But he was able to give us some additional — and very valuable — information about Skepertzis.The lattter wanted to know about the banking facilities in certain specified towns in the United States and Mexico.

'The bank clerk provided our agent with the names and ad­dresses of the banks concerned. We checked those against two lists regarding Andropulos's banking activities Skepertzis had made enquiries about banks in five cities and, lo and behold and to nobody's surprise, all five also appeared on the lists concerning Andropulos.

'We instituted immediate enquiries. It turns out that friend Skepertzis has bank accounts in all five cities. All under his own name. In each of those banks close on three-quarters of a million dollars have been transferred to the accounts of a certain Thomas Thompson and a certain Kyriakos Katzanevakis. It's a measure of those two gentlemen's belief in their immunity to investigation that they hadn't even bothered to change their names. Not that that would have mattered in the long run - not after we had got around to circulating photographs.

A silence ensued, a silence that was long and profound and more than a little gloomy. It was the President himself who finally broke it.

'A stirring tale, is it not, Sir John?'

'Stirring, indeed. Richard had the right term for it — shatter­ing.'

'But - well, have you no questions?'

'No.'

The President looked at him in near disbelief. 'Not even one little question?'

'Not even one, Mr President.'

'But surely you must want to know the identities of Thomp­son and Katzanevakis?'

'I don't want to know. If we must refer to them at all I'd rather just refer to them as the general and the admiral.' He looked at Hollison. 'That would be about right, Richard?'

'I'm afraid so. A general and an admiral.

'The point is that you all seem convinced — there appears to be a certain doom-laden certainty about this — that this affair, this top-level treason, if you will, is bound to become public knowledge. I have one simple question. Why?'

'Why? Why?' The President shook his head as if bemused or stunned by the naivete of the question. 'God damn it, Sir John, it's bound to come out. It's inevitable. How else are we going to explain things away? If we are at fault, if we are the guilty party, we must in all honesty openly confess to that guilt. We must stand up and be counted.'

'We have been friends for some years now, Mr President. Friends are allowed to speak openly?'

'Of course, of course.'

'Your sentiments, Mr President, do you the greatest poss­ible credit but, I am referring to what is practical and politic. It's bound to come out, you say. Certainly it will — but only if the President of the United States decides that it must. How, you ask, are we going to explain things away? Simple. We don't Mr President, you have a duty not to speak out. There is nothing whatsoever to be gained, and a very great deal to be lost. at best you will be hanging out a great deal of dirty washing in public and all to no avail, to no purpose: at worst, you will be providing invaluable ammunition for your enemies. Such open and, if I may say so, ill-advised confession will achieve at best an absolute zero and at worst a big black minus for you, the Pentagon and the citizens of America. The Pentagon, I am sure, is composed of honourable men. Sure, it may have its quota of the misguided, the incompetent, even the downright stupid: name me any large and powerful bureau­cratic elite that has never had such a quota. All that matters, finally and basically, is that they are honourable men and I see no earthly justification for dragging the reputations of honourable men through the dust because we have discovered two rotten apples at the bottom of the barrel.

'I can only nod emphatic agreement,' John Heiman, the Defense Secretary said. 'If I may mix up two metaphors - if I am mixing them - we have only two options. We can let sleeping dogs lie or let slip the dogs of war. Sleeping dogs never harmed anyone but the dogs of war are an unpredictable bunch. Instead of biting the enemy they may well turn, in this case almost certainly would turn, and savage us.'

The President looked at Hollison. 'Richard?'

'You're in the card-game of your life, Mr President. You've got only one trump and it's marked "Silence”.

James Grover Thurber

Thurber, James Grover (1894—1961)—American humorous writer and journalist. His essays, sketches, fables and stories were mostly published in the New-Yorker (American humorous weekly). Thurber published more than twenty books among which the most popular are 7s Sex Necessary?, Let Your Mind Alone, The Last Flower, Men, Women and Dogs, Alarms and Diversions. The posthumous collection of his short stories was published in 1962 under the title Credos and Curious.

There's No Place Like Home

If you are thinking about going abroad and want to preserve your ardour for travelling, don't pore over a little book called Collins' Pocket Interpreters: ' France, which I picked up in London. Written especially to instruct the English how to speak French in the train, the hotel, the quandary, the dilemma, etc., it is, of course, equally useful — I might also say equally de­pressing — to Americans. I have come across a number of these helps-for-travellers, but none that has the heavy impact, the dark, cumulative power of Collins's. ²

Each page has a list of English expressions, one under the other, which gives them the form of verse. The French translations are run alongside. Thus, on the first page, under The Port of Arrival', we begin (quietly enough) with 'Porter, here is my baggage!'-'Porteur, void mes bagages!' From then on disaster follows fast and faster until in the end, as you shall see, all hell breaks loose.³ The volume contains three times as many expressions to use when one is in trouble as when everything is going all right. This, my own experience has shown, is about the right ratio, but God spare me from some of the difficulties for which the traveller is prepared in Mr Collins's melancholy narrative poem. I am going to leave out the French translations, because, for one thing, people who get in­volved in the messes and tangles we are coming to invariably forget their French and scream in English anyway. The phrases, as I have said, run, one under the other, but herein I shall have to run them one after the other (you can copy them down the other way, if you want to).

Trouble really starts in the canto called 'In the Customs Shed'.⁴ Here we have: 'I cannot open my case.' 'I have lost my keys.' 'Help me to close this case.' 'I did not know that I had to pay.' 'I don't want to pay so much.' 'I cannot find my porter.' 'Have you seen porter 153?' That last query is a little master­stroke of writing, I think, for in those few words we have a graphic picture of a tourist lost in a jumble of thousands of bags and scores of customs men, looking frantically for one of at least a hundred and fifty-three porters. We feel that the tourist will not find porter 153, and the note of frustration has been struck.

Our tourist (accompanied by his wife, I like to think) finally gets on the train for Paris — having lost his keys and not having found his porter — and it comes time presently to go to the dining-car, although he probably has no appetite, for the customs men, of course, have had to break open that one suitcase. Now, I think, it is the wife who begins to grumble: 'Someone has taken my seat.' 'Excuse me, sir, that seat is mine.' 'I cannot find my ticket!' 'I have left my ticket in the compartment.' 'I will go and look for it.' 'I have left my gloves (my purse) in the dining-car.' Here the note of frenzied disintegration, so familiar to all travellers abroad, is sounded. Next comes The Sleeper', which begins, ominously, with 'What is the matter?' and ends with 'May I open the window?' 'Can you open this window, please?' We realize, of course, that nobody is going to be able to open the window and that the tourist and his wife will suffocate. In this condition they arrive in Paris, and the scene there, on the crowded.station platform, is done with superb economy of line: 'I have left something in the train.' 'A parcel, an overcoat.' 'A mackintosh, a stick.' 'An umbrella, a camera.' 'A fur, a suitcase.' The travellers have now begun to go completely to pieces.

Next comes an effective little interlude about an aeroplane trip, which is one of my favourite passages in this swift and sorrowful tragedy: 'I want to reserve a place in the plane leaving tomorrow morning.' 'Whendo we start?' 'Can we get anything to eat on board?' 'When do we arrive?' 'I feel sick.' 'Have you any paper bags for air-sickness?' The noise is terrible.' 'Have you any cotton wool?' 'When are we going to land?' This brief masterpiece caused rne to cancel an air trip from London to Paris and go the easy way, across the Channel.

We now come to a section called 'At the Hotel', in which things go from worse to awful: 'Did you not get my letter?' 'I wrote to you three weeks ago.' 'I asked for a first-floor room.' 'If you can't give something better, I shall go away.' The chambermaid never comes when I ring.' 'I cannot sleep at night, there is so much noise.' 'I have just had a wire. I must leave at once.' Panic has begun to set in, and it is not appeased any by the advent of The Chambermaid': 'Are you the chambermaid?' There are no towels here.' The sheets on this bed are damp.' This room is not clean.' 'I have seen a mouse in the room.' 'You will have to set a mouse trap here.' (I am sure all you brave people who are still determined to come to France will want to know how to say 'mouse trap' in French: it's souriciere; but you better bring one with you.) The bells of hell at this point begin to ring in earnest: These shoes are not mine.' The bulb is broken.' The radiator is too warm.' The radiator doesn't work.' 'It is cold in this room.' This is not clean, bring me another.' 'I don't like this.' 'I can't eat this. Take it away!'

I somehow now see the tourist's wife stalking angrily out of the hotel, to get away from it all (without any shoes on) and, properly enough, the booklet seems to follow her course — first under 'Guides and Interpreters': 'You are asking too much.' 'I will not give you any more.' 'I shall call a policeman.' 'He can settle this affair.' Then under 'Inquiring the Way': 'I am lost.' 'I was looking for —' 'Someone robbed me.' That man robbed me.' That man is following me everywhere.' She rushes to The Hairdresser', where, for a, change, everything goes quite smoothly until: The water is too hot, you are scalding me!' Then she goes shopping, but there is no surcease: 'You have not given me the right change.' 'I bought this two days ago.' 'It doesn't work.' 'It is broken.' 'It is torn.' 'It doesn't fit me.' Then to a restaurant for a snack and a reviving cup of tea: 'This is not fresh.' 'This piece is too fat.' 'This doesn't smell very nice.' There is a mistake in the bill.' 'While I was dining someone has taken my purse.' 'I have left my glasses (my watch) (a ring) in the lavatory.' Madness has now come upon her and she rushes wildly out into the street. Her husband, I think, has at the same time plunged blindly out of the hotel to find her. We come then, quite naturally, to 'Accident', which is calculated to keep the faint of heart — nay, the heart of oak — safely at home by his own fireside:⁵ There has been an accident!' 'Go and fetch a policeman quickly.' 'Is there a doctor near here?' 'Send for the ambulance.' 'He is seriously injured.' 'She has been run over.' 'He has been knocked down.' The back, a bone.' The face, the finger.' The foot, the head.' The knee, the leg.' The neck, the nose.' The wrist, the shoulder.' 'He has broken his arm.' 'He has broken his leg.' 'He has a sprained ankle.' 'He has a sprained wrist.' 'He is losing blood.' 'He has fainted.' 'He has lost conscious­ness.' 'He has burnt his face.' 'It is swollen.' 'It is bleeding.' 'Bring some cold water.' 'Help me to carry him.' (Apparently, you just let her lie there, while you attended to him — but, of course, she was merely run over, whereas he has taken a terrific tossing around.) ⁶ We next see the husband and wife back in their room at the dreary hotel, both in bed, and both obvious­ly hysterical. This scene is entitled 'Illness': 'I am feeling very ill, send for the doctor.' 'I have pains in -'I have pains all over.' The back, the chest.' The ear, the head.' The eyes, the heart.' The joints, the kid­neys.' The lungs, the stomach.' The throat, the tongue.' 'Put out your tongue.' The heart is affected.' 'I feel a pain here.' 'He is not sleeping well.' 'He cannot eat.' 'My stomach is out of order.' 'She is feverish.' 'I have caught a cold.' 'I have caught a chill.' 'He has a tem­perature.' 'I have a eough.' 'Will you give me a pre­scription?' 'What must I do?' 'Must I stay in bed?' 'I feel better.' 'When will you come and see me again?' 'Biliousness, rheumatism.' 'Insomnia, sunstroke.' 'Faint­ing, a fit.' 'Hoarseness, sore throat.' The medicine, the remedy.' 'A poultice, a draught.' 'A.tablespoon-fill, a teaspoonful.' 'A sticking plaster, senna.' 'Iodine.' The last suicidal bleat for iodine is, to me, a masterful touch.

Our couple finally get on their feet again, for trav­ellers are tough — they've got to be — but we see un­der the next heading, 'Common \Vords and Phrases', that they are left forever punch-drunk and shattered: ⁷ 'Can I help you?' 'Excuse me.' 'Carry on!' 'Look here!' 'Look down there!' 'Look up there!' 'Why, how?' 'When, where?' 'Because.' That's it!' 'It is too much, it is too dear.' 'It is very cheap.' 'Who, what, which?' 'Look out!' Those are Valkyries,⁸ one feels, riding .around, and above, and under our unhappy husband and wife. The book sweeps on to a mad operatic ending of the trag­edy, with all the strings and brasses and woodwinds going full blast: ⁹ 'Where are we going?' 'Where are you going?' 'Come quickly and see!' 'I shall call a po­liceman.' 'Bring a policeman!' 'I shall stay here.' 'Will you help me?' 'Help! Fire!' 'Who are you?' 'I don't know you.' 'I don't want to speak to you.' 'Leave me alone.' 'That will do.' 'You are mistaken.' 'It was not I.' 'I didn't do it.' 'I will give you nothing.' 'Go away now!' 'It has nothing to dp with me.' 'Where should one apply?' 'What must I do?' What have I done?' T have done nothing.' 'I have already paid you.' 'I have paid you enough.' 'Let me pass!' 'Where is the British consulate?' The oboes take that last, despairing wail, and the curtain comes down. ¹⁰

So you're going to France?

REGINALD ON BESETTING SINS

THE WOMAN WHO TOLD THE TRUTH

There was once (said Reginald) a woman who told the truth. Not all at once, of course, but the habit grew upon her gradually, like lichen on an apparently healthy tree. She had no children—otherwise it might have been different. It began with little things, for no particu­lar reason except that her life was a rather empty one, and it is so easy to slip into the habit of telling the truth in little matters. And then it became difficult to draw the line at more important things, until at last she took to telling the truth about her age; she said she was forty-two and five months—by that time, you see, she was vera­cious even to months. It may have been pleasing to the angels, but her elder sister was not gratified. On the Woman's birthday, instead of the opera-tickets which she had hoped for, her sister gave her a view of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, which is not quite the same thing. The revenge of an elder sister may be long in coming, but, like a South-Eastern express, it arrives in its own good time. The friends of the Woman tried to dissuade her from over­indulgence in the practice, but she said she was wedded to the truth; whereupon it was remarked that it was scarcely logical to be so much together in public. (No really provident woman lunches regu­larly with her husband if she wishes to burst upon him as a revela­tion at dinner. He must have time to forget; an afternoon is not enough.) And after a while her friends began to thin out in patches. Her passion for the truth was not compatible with a large visiting-list. For instance, she told Miriam Klopstock exactly how she looked at the Ilexes' ball. Certainly Miriam had asked for her candid opin­ion, but the Woman prayed in church every Sunday for peace in our time, and it was not consistent.

It was unfortunate, every one agreed, that she had no family; with a child or two in the house, there is an unconscious check upon too free an indulgence in the truth. Children are given us to discourage our better emotions. That is why the stage, with all its efforts, can never be as artificial as life; even in an Ibsen⁵⁵ drama one must reveal to the audience things that one would suppress before the children or servants.

Fate may have ordained the truth-telling from the commence­ment and should justly bear some of the blame; but in having no children the Woman was guilty, at least, of contributory negligence.

Little by little she felt she was becoming a slave to what had once been merely an idle propensity; and one day she knew. Every woman tells ninety per cent of the truth to her dressmaker; the other ten per cent is the irreducible minimum of deception beyond which no self-respecting client trespasses. Madame Draga's establishment was a meeting-ground for naked truths and overdressed fictions, and it was here, the Woman felt, that she might make a final effort to recall the artless mendacity of past days. Madame herself was in an inspiring mood, with the air of a sphinx who knew all things and preferred to forget most of them. As a War Minister she might have been celebrated, but she was content to be merely rich.

"If I take it in here, and—Miss Howard, one moment, if you please—and there, and round like this—so—I really think you will find it quite easy".

The Woman hesitated; it seemed to require such a small effort to simply acquiesce in Madame's views. But habit had become too strong. "I'm afraid", she faltered, "it's just the least little bit in the world too—"

And by that least little bit she measured the deeps and eternities of her thraldom to fact. Madame was not best pleased at being contradicted on a professional matter, and when Madame lost her temper you usually found it afterwards in the bill.

And at last the dreadful thing came, as the Woman had foreseen all along that it must; it was one of those paltry little truths with which she harried her waking hours. On a raw Wednesday morn­ing, in a few ill-chosen words, she told the cook that she drank. She remembered the scene afterwards as vividly as though it had been painted in her mind by Abbey. The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go she went.

Miriam Klopstock came to lunch the next day. Women and el­ephants never forget an injury.