(no subject)

Endless Things is listed on amazon now, $25, preorderable for $16.50, predicted for April 1 & at 400 pp--so hardly a mere coda. The review language boasts it (Aegypt) the peer of The Alexandria Quartet and A Dance to the Music of Time. Didn't get through those but that's totally slumming.

This thing, attributed to Leonidas of Tarentum, tr. by Byron's influencer Merivale:

With courage seek the kingdom of the dead;
The path before you lies,
It is not hard to find, nor tread;
No rocks to climb, no lanes to thread;
But broad, and straight, and even still,
And ever gently slopes downhill;
You cannot miss it, though you shut your eyes.

(no subject)

Another passage I've lost: Tolstoy describing self-consciousness, late in the Childhood trilogy I'd thought. The youth feels superior yet inferior to all--his specialness sets him apart, his apartness makes him a freak, his freakishness makes him special. It's unclear if his gifts are great or if the conviction of great gifts is how you stand loneliness, or what. Tolstoy puts it infinitely better, and in the description you see Hitlers as well as benign things, Tolstoys.