The Unquiet Grave

By Palinurus

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Apr 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781446545539

Reviews for The Unquiet Grave

[neurodrew · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Unquiet GraveA Word Cycle by PalinurusCyril ConnollySunday, February 16, 2014 I finished this book about a week ago, and have been avoiding writing about it because I have been thinking and trying to understand it. Palinurus is Aeneas' trusted pilot, washed overboard, and ashore, where he is killed. Oracles ascribe the later troubles of the Trojans as they reach Italy to Palinurus' restless spirit, left unburied on a strange shore. The introduction helps to explain the structure of the book. The first section, introduces the author, and the fact of his failed marriage, and sets the time in the midst of WWII. "Two fears alternate in marriage, that of loneliness and that of bondage" "A woman who cannot feign submission can never make a man happy and so cannot be happy herself" The second drags the depression deeper, referring to suicides of friends, and quoting at great length from French savants. In the third the beginning of his marriage is recalled, from Paris to Toulon, and he begins to heal. Chamfort: "A man must swallow a toad every morning if he wishes to be sure of finding nothing more disgusting before the day is over""…melancholy and remorse form the deep leaden keel which enables us to sail into the wind of reality""Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment" SantayanaAltogether, I read this as a meditation on enduring life and its challenges, with great beauty in its prose style, but often obscure in meaning.

[hjenne-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Surprisingly concise and rich, it is a book to be placed in the same constellation where Cervantes's "D. Quixote", Dante's "Inferno", Shakespeare's "Othello", and Baudelaire's "Fleurs du Mal" reside...