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Moslem family: Father a principal of school near Benares. Stern tall man aging about 55 years speaks in loud almost shouting voice (many Indians though they have spoken English for thirty years are still uncomfortable with it, they tend to exaggerate pronunciations, they are never relaxed with the language so conversation is difficult) is very righteous in his opinions: "the Moslem religion is the only religion that has come down through the ages untampered with the original word of truth etc." Again these black + white opinions, blunt not subtle. He says that the purdah system is going out but of course I never meet any of the women of his family, though their presence is felt in peeking through an inside window curtain with an occasional giggle. I ask is not the "bushka"? the women wear hot in the summertime. He answers "they are used to it" - (the son earlier had informed me that the women in his family wear it when they go out.) He believes quality of education is worse the students in his school no longer like to study all they care for is getting grades in exams. They carry knives and threaten examiners who are afraid, what can they do. They let the student get away with it. He has 12 children seven boys and five girls, will retire next year but must find another job to support his family. Only one son is employed.

All works of art whose function it is to express the soul and the emotions are always so ugly as to be beautiful and so beautiful as to be ugly. That is

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a law." - Magic Mountain. Mann p 393

signum mortificationis=anonymous and communal

It is a question of focal adjustment, of a certain distance that the inner eye thrills to surmount, and a certain contract that the mind perceives with a gasp of perverse delight." - from Lolita Nabokov quoted in Nabokov's Congerie p xiv

"Now I know that it is not out of our single souls we dream. We dream anonymously and communally, if each after his own fashion. The great soul of which we are a part may dream through us, in our manner of dreaming, its own secret dreams..." p 495 Magic Mountain - Mann

June 12, 70

"reality is an infinite succession of levels, levels of perception of false bottoms, and hence unquenchable, unattainable." p xxvi Nabokov's Congerie

realism

". . . to mime or describe without fear of traditional restriction any physical or moral detail pertaining to the world he perceives." Nabokov's Congerie p 282 from commentary to Eugene Onegin

"Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a space-traveler's helmet. Stay inside or you perish. Death is divestment death in communion. It may be wonderful to mix with the landscape, but to do so is the end of the tender ego" Nabokov's Congerie p 372 from Pnin

June 14, 70