by
Italo Svevo
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When he awoke he found that night was falling, one of those melancholy sunsets at the close of a lovely winter's day. He sat up on his bed. still undecided as to what he should do. Often he used to study at that hour, but now his books looked down from their shelves in vain. All those titles spoke of something dead and gone and quite incapable of making him forget for a single instant the painful life-struggle which was still being waged in his breast.
He made an effort to profit by his newly acquired liberty. He felt that his mind had become inactive, and the idea pained him, for he remembered how years ago art had given color to his life, lifting him out of the inertia into which he had fallen after the death of his father. It was then that he had written his novel, the story of a young artist whose intellect and health are ruined by a woman. He had portrayed himself in the hero, his own innocence and gentleness of nature. His heroine he had pictured after the fashion of the time as a mixture of woman and tiger. She had the movements, the eyes, the sanguinary character of the wild beast. He had never known a woman and that was how he imagined her, an animal whom it was hard to conceive ever being born or prospering in this world. But with what confidence he had described her! He had suffered and enjoyed with her and sometimes even felt that he harbored in himself that monstrous hybrid of tiger and woman.
lmao
[...] He thought of her continually as an old man thinks of his youth. How young he had been that night when he wanted to kill her in order to calm himself! If he had written then instead of pacing about the streets like an angry lion, and afterwards tossing wearily in his bed. he would surely have discovered a new artistic road which later he had sought in vain. But it was all over for ever. Angiolina still lived, but she could never give him back his youth.
He continued to hope that entire possession of her would in the end subdue the violence of his feelings. But he continued to go to their rendezvous with the same uncontrollable desire and he could not get rid of the tendency to reconstruct the Ange who was daily broken into fragments. His dissatisfaction led him to seek refuge in the sweetest of dreams; so Angiolina really gave him everything: the possession of her body and --- since one gave birth to the other --- the poet's dream as well.
[...] They were walking along the seafront when they saw Angiolina coming towards them, all lit up by the midday sun which was playing in her fair curls. She had screwed up her face a little in the effort to keep her eyes open in the strong sunlight. Balli found himself suddenly face to face with his masterpiece and, disregarding its outline, saw it for the first time in all its details. She advanced towards them with that firm step of hers which did not in the least diminish the grace of her upright figure. Youth incarnate, clothed, would have walked like that in the sunlight.
Dawn was beginning, dark, hesitating, sad. It was whitening the windowpanes but left the interior of the room in darkness. One ray however, seemed to have penetrated, for the daylight breaking over the glasses on the table colored them with faint and delicate shades of blue and green. The wind was still blowing in the street with the same even, triumphant sounds as when Emilio had left Angiolina.
It’s a story. There are challenges. There’s hard work, pulling up laces, rolling up shirtsleeves, and forcing yourself. Up. Overcoming, transcending, et cetera. You’ve heard it before. It’s not my life, but it’s illuminated two metres tall behind me and I’m speaking it into the soft, malleable faces tilted forwards on uniformed shoulders. I recite my old lines like new secrets. Click to the next slide. Giant, diverse, smiling faces in grey suits point at charts, shake hands and wave behind me. The projector whirrs and their smiles morph into the bank’s roaring logo. Time to wrap up. I look out around the rows of schoolgirls. Thank them for listening, before taking questions.
the content isn't particularly inspired or original but the style isn't too bad
‘Sometimes, I just –’ He stopped and picked at the label on his beer bottle. It looked damp and soft from condensation and he tore off little pieces at a time, balled them up between his finger and thumb and flicked the sticky globs into the grass. When we’d first dated, he would brandish his name to maître d’s with a booming exuberance. I wondered whether that sense of self had been picked away, or whether his self were only a dinner jacket he put on and then took off again. Head tilted back, he glugged from the bottle. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed and I imagined cool beer flowing down his throat, along the curve of his chest and sloshing into his belly.
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We had our usual table at the mezzanine coffee point above the office lobby. Rach’s nails, peachy-manicured as always, tip-tapped against her almond latte. We’d slipped from co-workers to friends over the last year as her father recovered from cancer and my grandmother died of it. She was a Home Counties, Kate-loving, Jaeger-shopping, Lean In-feminist who arranged animal-welfare fundraisers at the weekends and bought handmade earrings from Etsy. She once called me in tears from the Hermès store. It’s all too beautiful, she’d sobbed in halting syllables as the shop assistant packaged her scarves.
this is mean without any real justification. i don't like it
What compelled Rach to pursue this career? I knew why I did it. Banks – I understood what they were. Ruthless, efficient money-machines with a byproduct of social mobility. Really, what other industry would have offered me the same chance? Unlike my boyfriend, I didn’t have the prerequisite connections or money to venture into politics. The financial industry was the only viable route upwards. I’d traded in my life for a sliver of middle-class comfort. For a future. My parents and grandparents had no such opportunities; I felt I could hardly waste mine. Yet, it didn’t sit right with me to propagate the same beliefs within a new generation of children. It belied the lack of progress – shaping their aspiration into a uniform and compliant form; their selves into workers who were grateful and industrious and understood their role in society. Who knew the limit to any ascent.
similar to tech for some people i guess