Strange Names/ "Tender is the Night" [1934]

[alice wellintown]

Yes! Fitzgerald and those American "Catholics" and Puritans! Yes, the
names, the faces.

And IV is more Pat Hobby Stories ...bitter, vulgar, angry, ugly.

And did the poet need such pards and useful substances to wonder about
and to wander into the green breasts of America?

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
  Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
  Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,   35
  And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
    Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays
          But here there is no light,
  Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
    Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.   40

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
  Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
  Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;   45
  White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
    Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
          And mid-May's eldest child,
  The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
    The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.   50

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
  I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
  To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,   55
  To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
    While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
          In such an ecstasy!
  Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
    To thy high requiem become a sod.   60

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
  No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
  In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path   65
  Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
    She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
          The same that ofttimes hath
  Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
    Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.   70

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
  To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
  As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades   75
  Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
    Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
          In the next valley-glades:
  Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
    Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?





> For US-American literature it's rather Fitzgerald, no?
>
> Cf. Dick Diver vs. Tommy Barban (in "Tender is the Night")
>
> Incredible novel, btw, that I recently re-read and about
> which I think that its influence on Pynchon is underrated.
>
> Think of the scene early on in the movie studio or sing
> along the following song:
>
> "There was a young lady from hell,
> Who jumped at the sound of a bell,
> Because she was bad - bad - bad,
> She jumped at the sound of a bell,
> From hell (BOOMBOOM)
> From hell (TOOTTOOT)
> There was a young lady from hell --"
>
> Now everybody -
>
>
>>
>> ``No, not at all,'' says Lethem. ``First of all, the grandfather of strange
>> character names is not Pynchon or Vonnegut. It's Dickens. That for me is the
>>
>