September 3, 2010

I look back on the Erebus that was my dwelling at the beginning of the week. I raged in fury. God did not take away the causes of the fury, but he did take away the fury, which turns out to be good enough.

Gout, that most distracting and attention-stealing of afflictions. I did manage to paint today, and to make discoveries while I did, and I think I’ll be able to fulfill my duties at Montford Park, though the pain has rather increased since this morning. Stepped in a hole while I was watering the garden, and bent the toe back, and I thought I would pass out.

Theobald’s Prologue to The Double Falsehood returns to the trope of Shakespeare as the wild garden, which the Eighteenth Century can aid with a little formality, a little organization. When our century looks back, I think it tries to assert a reconciliation with meaninglessness, the lack of which renders the work of the past a little naive: Shakespeare and Shelley gaping at the pretty church windows, believing the stories .