Often, beyond the next turning, footfalls of a herd galloping across stone were heard, or further in the distance, with reassuring grunts, a wild boar could be seen, trotting with steady stride along the edge of the road with her sow and a whole procession of young in tow. And then one's heart beat faster upon advancing a little into the subtle light: one might have said that the path had suddenly become wild, thick with grass, its dark paving-slabs engulfed by nettles, blackthorn and sloe, so that it mingled up time past rather than crossing country-side, and perhaps it was going to issue forth, in the chiaroscuro of thicket smelling of moistened down and fresh grass, into one of those glades where animals spoke to men. Julien Gracq
About This Quote

The poem by James Elroy Flecker mentions a path in a wood. It was a path where a man could easily be lost. The thicket, the thicket is a thick wood. So the man moves forward and he moves forward with his heart beating fast upon advancing a little into the subtle light.

He observes that the path has suddenly become wild, thick with grass, its dark paving-slabs engulfed by nettles, blackthorn and sloe, so that it mingles up time past rather than crossing country-side. He continues to move forward and he comes across an old woman who is sitting on a tree stump, reading a book. She turns her head and notices him.

She says: "You have come across this way by accident?" "Yes," says the man. "I am afraid I must ask you to leave me alone," the old woman says sternly. "What? You are afraid of me?" says the man. "Yes, I am afraid of you," replies the old woman. "Why? Are you not one of those people who want to do us harm?" The man laughs, because he knows that this is not true at all; but he also laughs because he knows that he cannot see any kind of harm in the old woman; besides, she does not really look dangerous at all; she looks very harmless indeed; but he does laugh; because he knows that, nevertheless, she is quite right to be afraid of him; so he turns around and goes away quickly down the path which has become wild again now that he has come out of the wood.

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More Quotes By Julien Gracq
  1. Blood had long since ceased to beat from one end to the other, but one could sense, from passages marked with fresher traces of wheels and hooves, that once the meaning and even the very idea of a long journey was lost, sleep had not...
  2. Often, beyond the next turning, footfalls of a herd galloping across stone were heard, or further in the distance, with reassuring grunts, a wild boar could be seen, trotting with steady stride along the edge of the road with her sow and a whole procession...
  3. It was a fossilized path: the will which had cut this gash out of these solitary places so that the blood and sap would flow there was long since dead - and dead too were the circumstances which had guided this will. A whitish and...
  4. No, what numbed these fields, peopled with bad dreams was not the oppressive grip of a plague but rather an ailing retreat, a sort of sad widowhood. Man had started to subdue these vacant expanses, then had grown weary of eating into it, and now...
  5. A history of literature, unlike history as such, ought to list only victories, for its defeats are no victory for anyone.
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