But here is a trouble and a hindrance, that has ever impeded and hampered the dilettante in his enjoyments: one believes that one has to live, and to live one must try to earn. And who will buy these fragments, unstrung, unset, without context or coordinated form? Who will buy the fish or seaweed, shells or shrubs, caught in my drag-net, scattered loosely like the twigs of white coral and the oyster shells with which Italian fisher lads pursue the foreigner, crying
Frutto del mare?
No one (heaven forgive readers and heaven help writers) desires such loose jetsam. They desire books. And, oh, God of literature and of achieved tasks, how incompetent do I feel adequately to produce these!
1
My thanks are due to Miss Livia Gollancz, who patiently and skilfully took down this tune straight from the bird's beakâno easy task, with so rapid a performer.
This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
Copyright © 1990 by The Estate of Rose Macaulay
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ISBN: 9781448204113
eISBN: 9781448203529
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