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264

Syriam.
         
[[strikethrough]] September 20 [[/strikethrough]] Feb 6- 

to dinner. Conversation, politics, Formosa, opium, China & cats. Came home tired, sunburnt & completely relaxed after a heavenly day.

February 7- Monday-

AM- Lucy's portrait

AM P.M.'s portrait- all day

Quiet evening at home writing two letters to Emily - Reading 'Time'

Liked two quotations-

On Existentialism
All good existentialists believe that when they die they will die altogether; but they argue that precisely because man has no God to look after him; no Heaven to look forward to and no way of escaping death, he is so much the greater, because his hope & courage light the absurd void to which he is condemned.


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existentialism }
Faulkner       } 
           
[[strikethrough]] September 21 [[/strikethrough]]  Monday Feb. 7

Mortal man, in fact, is forever alive.
        
William Faulkner. - on the five best contemporary authors - 
"I said, Wolfe, Hemingway, Dos Passos, Caldwell and myself. I rated Wolfe first, myself second. I put Hemingway last. I said we were all failures.

I rated the authors on the basis of their splendid failure to do the impossible. I believed that Wolfe tried to do the greatest of the impossible, that he tried to reduce all human experience to literature. 
                   
And I thought that after Wolfe I had tried the most. I rated Hemingway last because he stayed within what he knew. He did it fine but he didn't try for the impossible.