Monday, September 10, 2007

The Quiz House

The house is in Bedford Park, Chiswick, it is where W.B.Yeats first met Maud Gonne in January 1889.
Posted by Bryan Appleyard at 6:00 am

1 comment:

  1. AnonymousSeptember 10, 2007 2:07 pm

    Oh, my. I should have known that. Of course she would fit perfectly into his "fascination with what's difficult" agenda.

    Sometimes I think about meetings like that, ones that mean so much to one person and so little to the other.

    A few years ago at a poetry conference, I was ferrying Donald Justice to his keynote speech and we were chatting. I had a friend who had been a colleague of Justice's at my undergraduate alma mater. My friend worshipped D.J. and had given him a draft of his novel to read. According to my friend, D.J. had dismissed it as juvenile, not worth his time. The friend was devastated. On our ride to the event, I mentioned the name of my friend --DJ's colleague -- to Justice.

    Justice glanced up. "Hmm," he said, "Name sounds familiar. No, I'm afraid I don't remember him."

    "He gave you a draft his novel," I prompted helpfully.

    "Oh, people are always giving me things to read," he said, "I can't keep track of them. No, I'm afraid I don't remember his novel. Probably not very good, though, or I would have remembered."

    Then the epiphany came: What meant everything to my friend had meant absolutely nothing to this distinguished poet. He couldn't even remember the encounter, nor the man he must have seen in hallways nearly daily during his time at the university.

    And this must happen all the time in romantic situations too. Someone falls madly in love with a beautiful person, and the person doesn't even notice, or noticing doesn't care.

    So does the world turn....

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