He got up and sat on the edge of the bedstead with his back to the window. “It’s better not to sleep at all,” he decided. There was a cold damp draught from the window, however; without getting up he drew the blanket over him and wrapped himself in it. He was not thinking of anything and did not want to think. But one image rose after another, incoherent scraps of thought without beginning or end passed through his mind. He sank into drowsiness. Perhaps the cold, or the dampness, or the dark, or the wind that howled under the window and tossed the trees roused a sort of persistent craving for the fantastic. He kept dwelling on images of flowers, he fancied a charming flower garden, a bright, warm, almost hot day, a holiday—Trinity day. A fine, sumptuous country cottage in the English taste overgrown with fragrant flowers, with flower beds going round the house; the porch, wreathed in climbers, was surrounded with beds of roses. A light, cool staircase, carpeted with rich rugs, was decorated with rare plants in china pots. He noticed particularly in the windows nosegays of tender, white, heavily fragrant narcissus bending over their bright, green, thick long stalks. He was reluctant to move away from them, but he went up the stairs and came into a large, high drawing-room and again everywhere—at the windows, the doors on to the balcony, and on the balcony itself—were flowers. The floors were strewn with freshly-cut fragrant hay, the windows were open, a fresh, cool, light air came into the room. The birds were chirruping under the window, and in the middle of the room, on a table covered with a white satin shroud, stood a coffin. The coffin was covered with white silk and edged with a thick white frill; wreaths of flowers surrounded it on all sides. Among the flowers lay a girl in a white muslin dress, with her arms crossed and pressed on her bosom, as though carved out of marble. But her loose fair hair was wet; there was a wreath of roses on her head. The stern and already rigid profile of her face looked as though chiselled of marble too, and the smile on her pale lips was full of an immense unchildish misery and sorrowful appeal. Svidrigaïlov knew that girl; there was no holy image, no burning candle beside the coffin; no sound of prayers: the girl had drowned herself. She was only fourteen, but her heart was broken. And she had destroyed herself, crushed by an insult that had appalled and amazed that childish soul, had smirched that angel purity with unmerited disgrace and torn from her a last scream of despair, unheeded and brutally disregarded, on a dark night in the cold and wet while the wind howled

The Blog

  • BLACK CLOCK Ceases Publication image of tag icon

    After 11 years, the literary journal BLACK CLOCK will be ceasing publication in June of 2016. This press release was sent out to submitters: Unfortunately Black Clock will be ceasing publication as of June 2016. This surprising decision was not made by us, the editors, and we were not aware such a decision was looming […]

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  • What Libraries Shouldn’t Be image of tag icon

    This NY Times article on libraries surprised me with a revelation about the smallest, saddest library in human history: the children’s library at Auschwitz, consisting of eight books that the girls hid every night so the guards wouldn’t confiscate them. But it goes on to talk about the role of libraries, and how it’s shifted away from […]

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  • 6 Reasons Why Ngugi Wa Thiong’o Will Win the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature image of tag icon

    Ngugi Wa Thiong’o has had high odds for the last few years among pundits to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. This year he’s currently given 7/1 odds, just behind Haruki Murakami. Although we don’t have any official confirmation that the Nobel prize committee has been entertaining the notion of giving him the most coveted […]

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  • 9 Ways to Write Brilliant Short Sentences image of tag icon

    I love short sentences. I really do. In any book filled with a series of long, expansive sentences, a short sentence arrives like a gift. Short sentences rarely have the ambiguity or mystery of a long sentence. They rarely have twists or swerves or switchbacks, because that requires the length of a longer sentence. They rarely win your admiration for […]

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  • James Tate Dies, Leaving Poetry World in Mourning image of tag icon

    It’s a sad day for the world of poetry. James Tate, a poet who won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, died today. RIP. He was 71. His poems have been described as “tragic, comic, absurdist, nihilistic, hopeful, haunting, lonely, and surreal.” (The Poetry Foundation). His death will leave his many readers in mourning. He is […]

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  • Musical Writing Prompts image of tag icon

    There are lot of creative writing prompts out there, and even some image-based writing prompts, but I think this is new: Musical Creative Writing Prompts. In the righthand sidebar there’s a link to a new page I’ve recently created with 30 song-based writing prompts. Each prompt has a song paired with a specific writing exercise based […]

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  • Benjamin Percy on How Genre Can Help Literary Writers image of tag icon

    Benjamin Percy on writing in Poets & Writers: “Consider this. Picasso trained in realism before he shattered our way of seeing. Patricia Smith can rock a sonnet or villanelle as well as experiment with free verse. Can you say the same? Can you write something that is scene-driven and as tightly fitted as a Lego […]

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  • Slideshow of “In Search of Lost Time” Graphic Novel image of tag icon

    French artist Stephane Heuet has visualized a book long thought to be beyond visualization. Over fifteen years he offered six installments of Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” in French, and now this graphic novel has been collected and will be released in English. Faithful Proustians will surely make an uproar about how much has been lost, […]

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  • A Punctuation Video Game: All Praise to the Adventurous Colon image of tag icon

    I love this right-scrolling video game with punctuation. So reminiscent of the early 90s Nintendo games.

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