Thursday, July 10, 2008

Roderick Hudson. Henry James (2)

New York: The Library of America
1876 (1983)

Ideas and Quotes to Discuss:

167 “Rowland Mallet had an uncomfortable sensitive conscience…and his visits to Cecilia were rare because she and her misfortunes were often uppermost in it.”

168 “And in truth, with his means, his leisure, and his opportunities, what had he done? He had an unaffected suspicion of his uselessness.”

168 ‘What is it you mean to do in Europe?’ she asked lightly.” Rowland: “Why very much what I do here…no great harm.”

170 “[Rome]…is evidently only a sort of idealized form of loafing: a passive life in Rome, thanks to the number and the quality of one’s impressions, takes on a very respectable likeness to activity. It is still lotus-eating, only you sit down at table, and the lotuses are served up on rococo China.”

171 “I am tired of myself, my own thoughts, my own affairs, my own eternal company. True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one’s self; but the point is not only to get out—you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.”

171 “…I spend my days groping for the latch of a closed door.”

171 “What an immense number of words…to say you want to fall in love.”

174 “…he felt the friction of existence more than was suspected….”

185 “Sculpture, to her [Roderick’s mother’s] mind, is an insidious form of immorality.”

185 “Then his mother, as she one day confessed to me, has a holy horror of a profession which consists exclusively…in making figures of people without their clothes on.”

187 “It’s a wretched business…this practical quarrel of ours with our own country, this everlasting impatience to get out of it.”

193 “It’s rather a hard fate, to live like a saint and to pass for a sinner.”

199 “Perhaps you believe in the necessary turbulence of genius….”

204 “Mrs. Hudson…looked painfully perplexed between the desire to confess the truth and the fear of being impolite.”

205 “How do you study sculpture, any how?” “By looking at models and imitating them.”

205 Mr. Striker: “An antique, as I understand it…is an image of a pagan deity, with considerable dirt sticking to it, and no arms, no nose, and no clothes.”

To be continued.

No comments: