“It is a volume of pure delight. For a time I forgot everything and wandered happily in the deserted halls and courts of the old Moorish palace with Irving … drinking in with him the romance and charm of a civilization long dead … The book seemed to me the gateway to an enchanged world … I stepped in, and lo, I walked with happiness and youth and pangless pleasure again.”
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“pangless pleasure” — Was it easy for her to write this well? Did it just flow onto the page? Please say no.
Yes. She wrote like that all the time. Her journals all read like that. Even when she was in despair, she was as articulate as that (her journals have brought me to tears.)
Only at the end of her life did she lose language – you can feel it happening – the entries get shorter and shorter. It’s tragic.
But “pangless pleasure” … yeah. She wrote like that all the time.
Bitch. :)