It was a dark & stormy night: Favourite beginnings & endings

[steve12553]

Mine is not quite Science Fiction or Fantasy but it is close on both counts.
"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago-never mind how long precisely- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore,I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world."

And ending with:"It was the devious cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, found only another orphan."

The preface to the epilogue is a quote from Job "And I only am escaped alone to tell thee"
If memory serves this was paraphrased by Ray Bradbury in his screenplay to the 1956 movie, "And I alone escaped to tell the tale"

For the youthful group not yet exposed this is of course Hermen Melville's Moby Dick Or the White Whale.

Add that to the Gunslinger, Dune, the Foghorn, and the Haunting of Hill House, you've got some of my favorite beginnings and endings

 

[j d worthington]

Steve -- WONDERFUL CHOICE! Good to see somone quoting Melville. Also, have you ever heard Bradbury tell about his experiences when Huston was trying to get him to do the screenplay for Moby Dick? It's quite interesting....

 

[steve12553]

Steve -- WONDERFUL CHOICE! Good to see somone quoting Melville. Also, have you ever heard Bradbury tell about his experiences when Huston was trying to get him to do the screenplay for Moby Dick? It's quite interesting....

I have a vague memory of that and I don't remember where I read it.

 

[j d worthington]

I have a vague memory of that and I don't remember where I read it.

Actually, I heard him tell the story on the Tomorrow show with Tom Snyder several years ago, but I think it may be in one of his collections, as well... I'll see if I can't track it down; if I do, I'll let you know where to find it.

 

[YOSSARIAN]

Actually, I heard him tell the story on the Tomorrow show with Tom Snyder several years ago, but I think it may be in one of his collections, as well... I'll see if I can't track it down; if I do, I'll let you know where to find it.

I'm not sure but I think Bradbury tells this stort in "Zen and the Art of Writing".

 

[j d worthington]

I'm not sure but I think Bradbury tells this stort in "Zen and the Art of Writing".

Thanks! I'll try to dig out my copy, and see. Appreciate the help on this.

 

[littlemissattitude]

Steve -- WONDERFUL CHOICE! Good to see somone quoting Melville. Also, have you ever heard Bradbury tell about his experiences when Huston was trying to get him to do the screenplay for Moby Dick? It's quite interesting....

Oh, yes. That was one of the things Bradbury discussed when I saw him speak at LosCon a few years ago. Very intereting.

 

[Nesacat]

This comes from Necronomicon: The Wanderings Of Alhazred by Donald Tyson.

The beginning:
You who would learn the wisdom of hidden things and traverse the avenues of shadow beneath the stars, heed this song of pain that was chanted by one who went unseen before you that you may follow the singing of his voice across the windblown sands that obscure the marks of his feet. Each who goes into the Empty Space walks alone, but where one has gone another may follow.

Turn not your mind from night fears, but embrace them as a lover. Let terror possess your body and course through your veins with its heady intoxication to steal your judgment, your very reason. In the madness of the night, all sounds become articulate. A man sure of himself, confident in his strength, aware of his rightful place, remains forever ignorant. His mind is closed. He cannot learn in life, and after death there is no acquisition of knowledge, only unending certainty. His highest fulfillment is to be food for the things that burrow and squirm, for in their mindless hunger they are pure, undefiled by reason, and their purity elevates them above the putrefying pride of our race.

By writhing on your belly in abject terror you will rise up in awareness of truth; by the screams that fill the throat unsought is the mind purged of the corruption of faith. There is no purpose in birth, no salvation of the soul in life, no reward after death. Abandon hope and you shall become free, and with freedom acquire emptiness.

The end:
For as long as his essential salts persist upon the face of this world, so long shall the poet endure and mock his enemies in verse. There is no death that would erase his substance so utterly that he cannot arise renewed and reborn. It is in this dual assurance of impregnability and immortality that he offers his journey of life within these pages, which are illuminated for the wise but remain shadowed from the gaze of fools. Here are secrets found in no other book, for they are known to no other man. Their purchase is beyond price, but it is the whim of the poet to scatter them upon the dust, and through the future years, like precious pearls, either to be gathered up by men of perception of trodden beneath the hooves of swine.

You who read this book will bless the name Alhazred; yet when you read it for the second time will you curse his name bitterly and lament with tears that you ever held it; yet there are a few who will read it a third time and give blessing once again; and to those few all doors lie open.

 

[Ozymandias]

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
Holden Caulfield at the end of The Catcher in the Rye

 

[j d worthington]

Well, as I don't recall seeing anything saying a verse tale doesn't count:

Bonnie Kilmeny gaed up the glen;
But it wasna to meet Duneira's men,
Nor the rosy monk of the isle to see,
For Kilmeny was pure as pure could be.
It was only to hear the yorlin sing,
And pu' the cress-flower round the spring;
The scarlet hypp and the hindberrye,
And the nut that hung frae the hazel tree;
For Kilmeny was pure as pure could be.
But lang may her minny look o'er the wa',
And lang may she seek i' the green-wood shaw;
Lang the laird o' Duneira blame,
And lang, lang greet or Kilmeny come hame!

and the ending:

When a month and a day had come and gane,
Kilmeny sought the green-wood wene;
There laid her down on the leaves sae green,
And Kilmeny on earth was never mair seen.
But O, the words that fell from her mouth
Were words of wonder, and words of truth!
But all the land were in fear and dread,
For they kendna whether she was living or dead.
It wasna her hame, and she couldna remain;
She left this world of sorrow and pain,
And return'd to the land of thought again.

from Kilmeny, by James Hogg

 

[Ozymandias]

Poems, eh?

I met a traveller from an antique land who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command tell that its sculptor well those passions read, which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things. The hand that mock'd them, and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

of that collosal wreck,boundless and bare,

the lone and level sands stretch far away...

Ozymandias of Egypt by Percy Bysshe Shelley. One of my favorites."What art man that thou should mind him?"

 

[Nesacat]

Ozymandias ... that's one of my favourite poems. Always conjures up an image of this collosus standing alone with nothing but sand around him as far as the eye can see. Sand that shifts and moves and is never still.

j.d. That's a sad verse. Whimsical but sad. Yet it makes perfect sense some days.

 

[Ozymandias]

Yeah, I like it 'cause it illustrates the hubris of man, and his eventual decline. Who's your favorite poet?

 

[Nesacat]

I don't really have a favourite poet, just like do not have a favourite band or singer. I like some poems and some songs for the way the words sound when they are strung together and for the images they then conjure.

Some of the poets that come to mind are Longfellow, Tennyson (Ring’d with the azure world, he stands - I read this one when I was very little and it was the first time I saw the word azure), Shelley, Frost (Fire & Ice), Neruda, Donne, Dante (I read the Divine Comedy every so often. I like the ring of the verses) , Basho, Gibran, Tagore, Donne, TS Eliot (Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats) .... there's many more.

And one of my favourite descriptions by William Cowper because of my love for storms and the ocean. This is what always comes to mind when standing on the shore in a storm.

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.

Fire and Ice - Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

The Eagle - Tennyson

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

 

[THWDP]

Poems, eh?

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

of that collosal wreck,boundless and bare,

the lone and level sands stretch far away...

Ozymandias of Egypt by Percy Bysshe Shelley. One of my favorites.


One of my favourites by Shelley as well - however I came across an alternative writing of Ozymandias by one of his friends, Horrace Smith, in a "friendly" competition on the same subject. According to Wikipedia it was published the next week and the ending I think is not only better but I think is very lovecraftian:

"He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place."

Check it out as I think it is worth a read.

 

[Ozymandias]

I read Smith's poem ages ago and enjoyed it very much. But I still like Shelley's better.

 

[Ozymandias]

.

Some of the poets that come to mind are Longfellow, Tennyson (Ring’d with the azure world, he stands - I read this one when I was very little and it was the first time I saw the word azure), Shelley, Frost (Fire & Ice), Neruda, Donne, Dante (I read the Divine Comedy every so often. I like the ring of the verses) , Basho, Gibran, Tagore, Donne, TS Eliot (Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats) .... there's many more.

The Divine Comedy, huh?

"This scum, who'd never lived, now fled about
Naked and goaded, for fierce swarm of hornets and wasps
Stung all the wretched rout"

Yeah, it's a laugh a minute.

Which translation do you prefer? I like Dorothy Sayers myself, but she only translated the Inferno. Thus that is the only book I have read of the trilogy, unfortunately. If you haven't read her translation I reccomend it.