"This poor forked thing"

   .. I suppose I am bound to see

   landscape as a field dominated

   by the human wish- tortured in-

   to farms and hamlets, ploughed

   into cities. A landscape scrib-

   bled with the signatures of men

   and epochs. Now, however, I am

   beginning to believe that the

   wish is inherited from the site;

   that man depends for the furni-

   ture of the will upon his loca-

   tion in place, tenant of fruit-

   ful acres or a perverted wood.

   It is not the impact of his free

   will upon nature which I see (as

   I thought) but the irresistible

   growth, through him, of nature's

   own blind unspecified doctrines

   of variation and torment.

   She has chosen this poor forked

   thing as an exemplar. Then how 

   idle it seems for any man to say, 

   say, as I once heard Balthazar  

   say: "The mission of the Cabal, 

   if it has one, is so to ennoble 

   function that even eating and 

   excreting will be raised to the

   rank of arts". You will see in 

   all this the flower of a perfect

   skepticism which undermines the 

   will to survive. Only love can 

   sustain one a little longer.

Lawrence Durrell

Justine

Faber & Faber, 1957©

Johann Sebastian Bach

Brandenburg Concerto No. 2

  Allegro

  BWV 1047

Benjamin Britten

English Chamber Orchestra

Decca Records, 1968©