Denton Welch Quotes

Maybe there is no better novel in the world than Denton Welch's In Youth Is Pleasure. Just holding it in my hands, so precious, so beyond gay, so deliciously subversive, is enough to make illiteracy a worse social crime than hunger.

When you long with all your heart for someone to love you, a madness grows there that shakes all sense from the trees and the water and the earth. And nothing lives for you, except the long deep bitter want. And this is what everyone feels from birth to death.

I had come with such pain and labour to a place where emptiness had arrived before me. I was too late, something black and hollow had overtaken me and wriggled through the door.

I began to long, as I had before, for some special smell, some special music that would fill me, lift me up and carry me away, float me off the rocks of my body and sweep me into some wideness, some vast expanse of blue-grey nothingness.

The white cat Sal-al was lying on the straw matting in the empty conservatory. She looked at us with a wicked, conceited expression as if all her appetites had just been satisfied. She was beautiful. Vesta and I both said, "I wish I were a cat!" Before we got to the last word we smiled at each other in annoyance, not liking the idea that most human beings think very much alike.

I thought of the many people who had said to me, 'You're young; you've got plenty of time to recover.' This seemed the coldest comfort, the grimmest fact of all.

I wrote about the night bird cries, the sea sounds and the lonely barking, and I liked what I wrote in flashes; but something was wrong with it. There is always something wrong with writing. So I tore the paper up at last, liking the untouched memory so much better, not wanting it forced into the insincerity of words.

It could be a Michael Powell film or a page from the diaries of Denton Welch...the field would make a good Brideshead-like beginning for a film: as it is now and as it was then...’There is nothing I would want to alter or improve. Unattended to, disregarded (though it’s grade 1 listed) it is just as the past should be.

Sometimes it grew so hot in my sheltered corner that I sweated. I would watch all the diamond beads forming in the shallow cross between my chest muscles; then when a sudden gust of wind caught them, I would see them dashed flat against my body, smeared and scattered. The ice of the wind suddenly striking my sweaty body made curious thrills of pleasure-pain, fear and exaltation pass through me. I thought of throwing myself from the roof and allowing the wind to carry me along, until I caught in the branches of a tree, where I would hang crucified, with my arms outstretched, until my pajamas rotted to tatters and rags, and my bones were cleaned of all flesh by the birds. I thought of them pecking out my eyes and enjoying tremendously these delicious morsels of glutinous hazel jelly. I wondered if a large bird would succeed in tearing out my tongue whole, or whether an army of tiny birds would just peck delicately at the tip and gradually work downwards until they reached the roots.

Bajé en Park Lane y entré al parque. Había parejas recostadas en el pasto y pensé en lo endebles que se veían, como basura abandonada en una playa o cadáveres en una vieja fotografía de guerra. Pero ¿cuáles serían sus pensamientos?, me pregunté. ¿Estaban sus mentes llenas de cosas extraordinarias que solo afloraban cuando estaban acostados? ¿Habían olvidado todo acerca del mundo exterior, o acaso la mirada de otra gente les producía un entusiasmo adicional? ¿Algunos de ellos seguirían siendo amantes durante años después de aquel primer día?.

Subí a un autobús y dejé que el paisaje se mezclara y se difuminara y se fundiera. El movimiento me calmó y me hizo soñar despierto. Me elevé por encima del ruido y la suciedad y el peligro.

Caminé en dirección a «casa ». Más tarde, cuando estuviera cansado, podía tomar un autobús. Miré atentamente la cara de las personas en busca de algo que había conocido mucho tiempo atrás, o que tal vez había soñado. Pero las caras no me decían nada; eran formales e indiferentes, como rebanadas de queso pálido envuelto en muselina gris. Tanta gente y sin embargo nadie para mí.

Ella parecía distante, fanática, en cierto sentido consagrada, pero ¿a qué? ¿A su colección de libros? Él se quedó a su lado porque le gustaba cómo el brillo crecía y se apagaba rápidamente cada vez que ella chupaba la pipa. Tambíen había una sensación de absurdo compañerismo; no muy intensa, pero presente. Al tratar de comprenderla, Ian solo podía pensar en aspectos de Baby que en sí mismos no eran muy atractivos. Ella no tenía nada que decir, y su misteriosa preocupación entorprecía sus respuestas a los demás. Parecía disfrutar quitarle importancia a su aspecto. El pelo recogido, el pañuelo sucio y la tosca ropa de chico le daban un secreto placer. Cuando estaba sola, con la mirada perdida, era fácil creer que sentía desprecio por la gente «normal», por su tonto engreimiento y su artificialidad.