"A man in my position might easily head for the mountains and try to find consolation in their perseverance -- never mind the rock slides, the sinking plateaux and erupting islands -- or, at the opposite extreme, he might extort some pleasure from knowing that he will outlast the flies spinning on the windowsill, but neither of these strategies can match the sinister joy of watching the dunes replacing themselves with each other, as if the world could be destroyed and renewed by the same gesture, as if my sense of death could melt into a universe of change, like ice slipping from a tilted glass into a summer lake."
— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Chatto & Windus
Date
2000
Metaphor
"A man in my position might easily head for the mountains and try to find consolation in their perseverance -- never mind the rock slides, the sinking plateaux and erupting islands -- or, at the opposite extreme, he might extort some pleasure from knowing that he will outlast the flies spinning on the windowsill, but neither of these strategies can match the sinister joy of watching the dunes replacing themselves with each other, as if the world could be destroyed and renewed by the same gesture, as if my sense of death could melt into a universe of change, like ice slipping from a tilted glass into a summer lake."
Metaphor in Context
A man in my position might easily head for the mountains and try to find consolation in their perseverance -- never mind the rock slides, the sinking plateaux and erupting islands -- or, at the opposite extreme, he might extort some pleasure from knowing that he will outlast the flies spinning on the windowsill, but neither of these strategies can match the sinister joy of watching the dunes replacing themselves with each other, as if the world could be destroyed and renewed by the same gesture, as if my sense of death could melt into a universe of change, like ice slipping from a tilted glass into a summer lake.
(p. 187)
(p. 187)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Edward St. Aubyn, A Clue to the Exit (London: Chatto & Windus, 2000).
Date of Entry
09/19/2015
