The Lesson One Can Learn From Firbank

In A Perfect Union The Man And Woman Are Like A Strung Bow. Who Is To Say Whether The String Bends The Bow, Or The Bow Tightens The String?

In The Dream Of Approaching Forty I Saw Myself As About To Die And Realized That I Was No Longer Myself, But A Creature Inhabited Entirely By Parasites, As A Caterpillar Is Occupied By The Grubs Of The Ichneumon Fly. Gin, Whisky, Sloth, Fear, Guilt, Tobacco, Had Made Themselves My Inquilines; Alcohol Sloshed About Within, While Tendrils Of Melon And Vine Grew Out Of Ears And Nostrils; My Mind Was A Worn Gramophone Record, My True Self Was Such A Ruin As To Seem Non-existent, And All This Had Happened In The Last Three Years.

In America Every Woman Has Her Set Of Girl-friends; Some Are Cousins, The Rest Are Gained At School. These Form A Permanent Committee Who Sit On Each Other's Affairs, Who Come Out Together, Marry And Divorce Together, And Who End As Those Groups Of Bustling, Heartless Well-informed Club-women Who Govern Society. Against Them The Couple Of Ehepaar Is Helpless And Man In Their Eyes But A Biological Interlude.

A Mutually Fulfilled Sexual Union Between Two People Is The Rarest Sensation Which Life Can Provide. But It Is Not Quite Real. It Stops When The Telephone Rings. Such A Passion Can Be Kept At Its Early Strength Only By Adding To It Either More And More Unhappiness (jealousy, Separation, Doubt, Renunciation), Or More And More Artificiality (drink, Technique, Stage-illusions). Whoever Has Missed This Has Never Lived, Who Lives For It Alone Is But Partly Alive.

Doing Is Overrated, And Success Undesirable, But The Bitterness Of Failure Even More So.