"And some there be, which have no memorial.."
Posted by sanna on September 16, 1998 at 15:02:38:
In response to sadness, written by Jane on September 16, 1998 at 09:57:38
]
] ] Its a powerful book. Has anyone else read it?
I have been bewitched by Vera Brittain´s true life (vera= true in Russian) for many years. WW I was the last war where man-to-man fight was a real thing, before the new weapons. The loss of the worthiest part of population is hard to imagine and even harder still to realize that in WW II the fate of Jewish people was more horrid.
Her writing style is so intricate and accurate and yet warm. Also, I find strength in her fate, because it´s actually a story of second chances in life. Like Anne Elliot, she gathered the pieces of her life together bravely, even when the hope or existence had gone. I find that she serves for me as a role model with the curative force of creative life she exercised…And yet she was very human, complex and 'ordinary' too: her 'real' diaries (Chronicles of Youth and Experience) show a rather different woman than in the "Testaments".
I have been thinking for a few weeks about this poem by her dead fiancee Leighton as one of the poems that remind me of Persuasion. Here it is (BTW, the quality of Leighton´s and Vera´s poems is superb..):
"The sunshine on the long white road
That ribboned down the hill,
The velvet clematis that clung
Around your window-sill,
Are waiting for you still.
Again the shadowed pool shall break
In dimples round your feet,
And when the thrush sings in your wood,
Unknowing you may meet
Another Stranger, Sweet.
And if he is not quite so old
As the boy you used to know,
And less proud, too, and worthier,
You may not let him go-
(And daisies are truer than passion-flowers)
It will be better so."
- Thanks, sanna Hil 21:33:27 9/17/98
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