Term
Father Latour
Death Comes...
Page 33 |
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Definition
| It was a long room of an agreeable shape. The thick clay walls had been finished on the inside by the deft palms of Indian women, and had that irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand. There was a reassuring solidity and depth about those walls, rounded at door-sills and window-sills, rounded in wide wings about the corner fire-place. |
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Term
Father Latour
Death Comes...
Page 29 |
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Definition
| He had expected to make a dry camp in the wilderness, and to sleep under a juniper tree, like the Prophet, tormented by thirst. But here he lay in comfort and safety, with love for his fellow creatures flowing like peace about his heart. |
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Term
The missionary, Bishop Ferrand
Death Comes...
Page 8 |
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Definition
| He will have to deal with savagery and ignorance, with dissolute priests and political intrigue. He must be a man to whom order is necessary--as dear as life. |
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Term
Father Vaillant
Death Comes...
Page 50 |
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Definition
| The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rast not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always. |
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Term
Father Latour
Death Comes...
Page 25 |
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Definition
| From the moment he entered this room with its thick whitewashed adobe walls, [he] had felt a kind of peace about it. |
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Term
Father Latour
Death Comes...
Page 27 |
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Definition
| ...but they had not room in their minds for two ideas; there was one Church, and the rest of the world was infidel. |
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Term
Father Latour
Death Comes...
Page 98 |
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Definition
| They actually lived upon their Rock; were born upon it and died upon it. There was an element of exaggeration in anything so simple! |
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Term
Father Latour
Death Comes...
Page 103 |
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Definition
| He was on a naked rock in the desert, in the stone age, a prey to homesickness for his own kind, his own epoch, for European man in his glorious history of desire and dreams. Through all the centuries that his own part of the world had been changing like the sky at daybreak, this people had been fixed, increasing neither in numbers or desires, rock-turtles on their rock. |
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Term
Padre Martinez
Death Comes...
Page 145 |
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Definition
| Celibacy may be all very well for the French clergy, but not for ours. St. Augustine himself says it is better not to go against nature. I find every evidence that in his old age he regretted having practised continence. |
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Term
Father Latour
Death Comes...
Page 86 |
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Definition
| The wings and tail and neck feathers were just indicated by the tool, and thinly painted. He was surprised to feel how light it was; the surface had the whiteness and velvety smoothness of very old wood. Though scarcely carved at all, merely smoothed into shape, it was strangely lifelike... |
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Term
Father Latour
Death Comes...
Page 216 |
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Definition
| Never...had it been permitted to him to behold such deep experiences of the holy joy of religion as on that pale December night. He was able to feel, kneeling beside her, the preciousness of the things of the altar to her who was without possessions. |
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Term
Father Latour
Death Comes...
Page 217 |
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Definition
| "Oh Sacred Heart of Mary!" she murmured by his side, and he felt how that name was food and raiment, friend and mother to her. He received the miracle in her heart into his own, saw through her eyes, knew that his poverty was as bleak as hers. When the Kingdom of Heaven had first come into the world, into a cruel world of torture and slaves and masters, He who brought it had said, "And whosoever is least among you, the same shall be first in the Kingdom of Heaven." This church was [her] house, and he was a servant in it. |
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Term
Father Latour
Death Comes...
Page 232 |
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Definition
| [He] judged that, just as it was the white man's way to assert himself in any landscape, to change it, make it over a little...it was the Indian's way to pass through a country without disturbing anything; to pass and leave no trace, like fish through water, or birds through the air. |
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Term
"Georgia Dusk"
Cane
Page 15 |
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Definition
The sky, lazily disdaining to pursue
The setting sun, too indolent to hold
A lengthened tournament for flashing gold,
Passively darkens for night's barbecue,
A feast of moon and men and barking hounds,
An orgy for some genius of the South
With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth,
Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds.
...
Meanwhile, the men, with vestiges of pomp,
Race memories of king and caravan,
High-priests, an ostrich, and a juju-man,
Go singing through the footpaths of the swamp.
... |
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Term
"Song of the Son"
Cane
Page 14 |
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Definition
Pour O pour that parting soul in song,
O pour it in the sawdust glow of night,
Into the velvet pine-smoke air to-night,
And let the valley carry it along.
And let the valley carry it along.
O land and soil, red soil and sweet-gum tree,
So scant of grass, so profligate of pines,
Now just before an epoch's sun declines
Thy son, in time, I have returned to thee,
Thy son, I have in time returned to thee. |
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Term
Fern
"Fern" from Cane
Page 16 |
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Definition
| Face flowed into her eyes. Flowed into soft cream foam and plaintive ripples, in such a way that wherever your glance may momentarily have rested, it immediately thereafter wavered in the direction of her eyes...Why, after noticing it, you sought her eyes, I cannot tell you. Her nose was aquiline. Semitic...They were strange eyes. |
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Term
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Definition
Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones
Are sharpening scythes. I see them place the hones
In their hip-pockets as a thing that's done,
ANd start their silent swinging, one by one.
Black horses drive a mower through the weeds,
And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds.
His belly close to the ground. I see the blade,
Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade. |
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Term
"Blood-Burning Moon"
Cane
Page 33 |
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Definition
| He passed the house with its huge open hearth which, in the days of slavery, was the plantation cookery. He saw Louisa bent over the hearth. He went in as a master should and took her. Direst, honest, bold. None of this sneaking that he had to go through now. |
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Term
"Blood-Burning Moon"
Cane
Page 30 |
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Definition
| The full moon in the great door was an omen. Negro women improvised songs against its spell. |
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Term
"Blood-Burning Moon"
Cane |
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Definition
Red nigger moon. Sinner!
Blood-burning moon. Sinner!
Come out that fact'ry door. |
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Term
"Seventh Street"
Cane
Page 41 |
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Definition
| Seventh Street is a bastard of Prohibition and the War. A crude-boned, soft-skinned wedge of nigger life breathing its loafer air, jazz songs and love, thrusting unconscious rythms, black reddish blood in the white and whitewashed wood of Washington. |
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Term
"Seventh Street"
Cane
Page 41 |
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Definition
Money burns the pocket, pocket hurts,
Bootleggers in silken shirts,
Ballooned, zooming Cadillacs,
Whizzing, whizzing down street-car tracks. |
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Term
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Definition
| The more I thought of it, the more I resented, yes, hell, thats what it was, her downright laziness. Sloppy indolence. There was no excuse for a healthy girl taking life so easy. |
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Term
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Definition
| Her eyes were soft and misty, the curves of her lips were wistful, and her smile seemed indulgent of the irrelevance of my remarks. |
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Term
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Definition
My body is opaque to the soul.
Driven of the spirit, long have I sought to temper it unto the spirit's longing,
But my mind, too, is opaque to the soul.
A closed lid is my soul's flesh-eye.
O Spirits of whom my soul is but a little finger,
Direct it to the lid of its flesh-eye.
I am weak with much giving.
I am weak with the desire to give more.
(How strong a thing is the little finger!)
So weak that I have confused the body with the soul,
And the body with its little finger.
(How frail is the little finger.)
My voice cold not carry to you did you well in stars,
O spirits of whom my soul is but a little finger... |
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Term
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Definition
| Dorris swings to the front. The line of girls, four deep, blurs within the shadow of suspended scenes. Dorris wants to dance. The director feels that and steps to one side. He smiles, and picks he for a leading lady, one of these days. Odd ends of stage-men emerge from the wings, and stare and clap... |
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Term
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Definition
| Light streaks down on him from a window high above. One half his face is orange in it. One half his face is in shadow. |
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Term
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Definition
| He mounts the steps to the workshop and starts a fire in the hearth. In the yard he finds some chunks of coalwhich he brings in and throws on the fire. He puts a kettle on to boil. The wagon draws him. He lifts an oak beam, fingers it, and becomes abstracted. Then comes to himself and places the beam upon the work-bench. |
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Term
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Definition
| Th sin whats fixed...upon th white folks...f telling Jesus--lies. O th sin th white folks 'mitted when they made the Bible lie. |
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Term
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Definition
| So thats your sin. All these years t tell us that th white folks made th Bible lie. Well, I'll be damned. Lewis ought t have been here. You old black fakir-- |
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Term
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Definition
| Light streaks through the iron-barred cellar window. Within its soft circle, the figures of Carrie and Father John. |
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Term
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Definition
| You don't understand. But its th soul of me that needs th risin. |
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