Good-bye to All That

Robert Graves

Цитаты

innashpitzberg14 декабря 2012 г.
In English preparatory and public schools romance is necessarily homosexual. The opposite sex is despised and treated as something obscene. Many boys never recover from this perversion. For every one born homosexual, at least ten permanent pseudo-homosexuals are made by the public school system: nine of these ten as honourably chaste and sentimental as I was.
11
88
innashpitzberg14 декабря 2012 г.
MY mother married my father largely, it seems, to help him out with his five motherless children. Having any herself was a secondary consideration. Yet first she had a girl, then she had another girl, and it was very nice, of course, to have them, but slightly disappointing, because she belonged to the generation and tradition that made a son the really important event; then I came, a fine healthy child. She was forty at my birth; and my father forty-nine. Four years later she had another son, and four years later still another son. The desired preponderance of male over female had been established, and twice five made ten.
Читать далее
11
78
innashpitzberg14 декабря 2012 г.
Though much harder on my relatives, and much more careful of associating with them than I am with strangers, I can admire my father and mother: my father for his simplicity and persistence, and my mother for her seriousness and strength. Both for their generosity. They never bullied me, and were grieved rather than angered by my default from formal religion.
11
77
innashpitzberg14 декабря 2012 г.
THOUGH often asked to publish a continuation of this autobiography, which I wrote in 1929 at the age of thirty-three, I am always glad to report that little of outstanding autobiographical interest has happened since. The proofs of Goodbye to All That reached me in Majorca, where I had gone to live as soon as I finished the writing, and which is still my home.
10
72
innashpitzberg14 декабря 2012 г.
The remainder of this story, from 1926 until today, is dramatic but unpublishable. Health and money both improved, marriage wore thin. New characters appeared on the stage. Nancy and I said unforgivable things to each other. We parted on May 6th, 1929. She, of course, insisted on keeping the children. So I went abroad, resolved never to make England my home again; which explains the ‘Goodbye to All That’ of this title.
10
70
innashpitzberg14 декабря 2012 г.
I had not realized before just how much the British controlled Egypt. Egypt ranked as an independent kingdom, but it seemed that I owed my principal allegiance not to King Fuad, who had given me my appointment and paid my salary, but to the High Commissioner, whose infantry, cavalry, and air squadrons were a constant reminder of his power. British officials could not understand the Egyptians’ desire for independence, considering them most ungrateful for all the beneficent labour and skill applied to their country since the eighties – raising it from bankruptcy to riches.
Читать далее
10
70
innashpitzberg14 декабря 2012 г.
Pallas told me that in another twenty years the women of Egypt would control everything. The feminist movement had just started, and since the woman were by far the most active and intelligent part of the population, great changes might be expected. Neither she nor her sisters would stand her father’s attempt to keep them in their places.
10
58
innashpitzberg14 декабря 2012 г.
Lawrence had written to me:
Egypt, being so near Europe, is not a savage country. The Egyptians… you need not dwell among. Indeed, it will be a miracle if an Englishman can get to know them.
10
57
innashpitzberg14 декабря 2012 г.
I got the appointment. The indirect proceeds from poem-writing can be enormously higher than the direct ones.
10
57
innashpitzberg14 декабря 2012 г.
A week or two later (this is how things have always happened in emergencies) I was invited to offer myself as a candidate for the post of Professor of English Literature at the newly-founded Royal Egyptian University, Cairo. I had been recommended, I found out afterwards, by two or three influential men, among them Arnold Bennett, always a good friend to me, and the first critic who spoke out strongly for my poems in the daily Press; and Lawrence, who had known Lord Lloyd, then High Commissioner of Egypt, during the Arab Revolt.
Читать далее
10
54