Iggy McSnurd's Love Passage

[Tim Regan]

There, that's got your attention.

If my memory serves correctly, a few months ago Iggy started a 
thread about Dickens. He didn't enjoy reading Dickens' books. By a 
weird bit of synchronicity, I was reading Great Expectations at the 
time. I didn't post though, since I was finding it a real dirge, and 
it lay unread for ages on my bedside table. Hoverer I felt stung by 
the Guardians inclusion in their 100 things to do in 2004 of the 
injunction to read a book written for grown-ups. So I've picked it 
up again.

Unlike the middle third, the last third is fantastic.

I actually started the book as part of an HP project. I wanted to 
see how Alfonso Cuaron rendered books onto the screen, in 
preparation for his treatment Prisoner of Azkaban. So I watched his 
versions of A Little Princess and Great Expectations (tres sexy) and 
then embarked on the books.

So, I'd like to include a love passage from Dickens' Great 
Expectations. I'm including it to whet Iggy's appetite, and in the 
hope that no list member is suffering the kind of unrequited love on 
this Valentines Day, that Pip was in the novel.

Here's the quote. It's just after Pip has told Estella and Miss 
Havesham some of the truth of his benefactor's identity.

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  "Nonsense," she returned;"nonsense. This will pass in no time."
  "Never Estella!"
  "You will get me out of your thoughts in a week."
  "Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. 
You have been in every line I have ever read since I first came 
here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. 
You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since – on the 
river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in 
the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, 
in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy 
that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones with which 
the strongest London buildings are made are not more real, or more 
impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your presence and 
influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. 
Estella, to the last hour of my life you cannot choose but remain 
part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the 
evil. But in this separation I associate you only with the good, and 
I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me 
far more good than harm, let me feel now what distress I may. God 
bless you, God forgive you!"
  In what ecstasy of unhappiness I got these broken words out of 
myself I don't know. The rhapsody welled up in within me, like blood 
from an inward wound, and gushed out. I held her hand to my lips 
some lingering moments, and so left her. But ever afterward I 
remembered – and soon afterward with stronger reason – that while 
Estella looked at me merely with incredulous wonder, the spectral 
figure of Miss Havisham, her hand still covering her heart, seemed 
all resolved into a stare of pity and remorse.

------------------------------

Cheers,

Dumbledad.