conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Press, BLOWN, BERSERK with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Poetry?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'LUX'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first four paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: LUX
  CiP records for this title are available from the British Library and the National Library of Australia.
  Those who knew nothing of what was about to take place saw the crowds — they felt the pull that drew the capillaries of the narrow streets into a central artery where the crowd surged like a great and overflowing river. If you had just gone out into the yard to scour a dish or air a mat you would probably not have stayed, the tug of that mass was so strong, the current caught you and pulled you on with it. Excited voices. What festivity were they all pouring towards? Some were eating as they hurried along, cramming dates into their mouths as hastily as they walked, as if their excitement could be pacified in no other way. There were men, and women too, some of the women clutching children who were too small to leave behind. There were also children who had joined the throng, as eager as the adults to be where all converged. Eddies of conversations, news exchanged between neighbours, the thwack and swish of cloth as determined limbs pressed against robes in the hurry to advance. Some robes lifted for ease of walking. Nearly running. A name, a woman's name runs through the crowd, concentrating the sounds to make a rope, thickening at the core of a strong current till soon this name is known by all.
  The tributary streets meet in a wide street — the main thoroughfare — which pulls the growing crowd to the fringes of the town, to a place which is neither town nor desert, a place where travellers sometimes camp, where thin animals dither and the vultures gather like gossips. The gate they go out of is called the Dung Gate. It is the exit route of the town's effluent, and the sweet smell of the excrement, so valuable as fertiliser, fills the air and leads many to hold their headcloths over their mouths and noses. But they do not go as far as the dung carts go. The destination is near to the gate: a wide place where the sand is packed down hard.
  Here the festive atmosphere is concentrated — traders have set up stalls selling fruit, hot bread, roasted corn. But this is not all. Near the centre of the arena there is a pyramid of stones — some as large as rocks to build a wall with, some smaller, the size that could fit in a hand. There are smooth stones but the majority of them are rough and jagged — the kind which a builder would reject unless he had the means to shape them. People are wandering over to this pile and helping themselves, lingering over their choice, weighing a stone in their hands, even turning it between one hand and the other in appraisal of its qualities, before moving away, their stone now concealed in the folds of their garment. Those who have already selected a rock or a stone stand around or sit on the ground, waiting for all to be ready.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know four more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Bathsheba blushed. She had admitted to Nathan what no one dared to speak out loud: that this was indeed (as most secretly believed) the son of a king — not of the soldier who had been her living husband only five months earlier. Nathan appeared not to notice, occupying himself instead with smiling at the baby, placing his own little finger near the small mouth, encouraging him to suck.
  He bent his head and avoided giving a direct answer, browsing the baby's head with his mouth and murmuring, as if to the child, 'No, no. We don't need to know that.'
  Bathsheba enjoyed watching this man with her son. She felt easy with him, partly because of her relief that he clearly knew the whole of her situation and did not judge her, but beyond that, his own naturalness permitted hers. After he had passed the baby, no longer crying, back to his mother his eyes lighted on a dish of oranges. He picked one up, along with a fine knife, and peeled the orange neatly. Then he tugged the segments apart and passed one, on the flat of his hand, to Bathsheba. They shared the orange in pleasant silence.
  Again he seemed to be more focussed on the baby, to whom he seemed to repeat Bathsheba's question, slowly, 'Did I always know?'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Bathsheba blushed. She had admitted to Nathan what no one dared to speak out loud: that this was indeed (as most secretly believed) the son of a king — not of the soldier who had been her living husband only five months earlier. Nathan appeared not to notice, occupying himself instead with smiling at the baby, placing his own little finger near the small mouth, encouraging him to suck.
  He bent his head and avoided giving a direct answer, browsing the baby's head with his mouth and murmuring, as if to the child, 'No, no. We don't need to know that.'
  Bathsheba enjoyed watching this man with her son. She felt easy with him, partly because of her relief that he clearly knew the whole of her situation and did not judge her, but beyond that, his own naturalness permitted hers. After he had passed the baby, no longer crying, back to his mother his eyes lighted on a dish of oranges. He picked one up, along with a fine knife, and peeled the orange neatly. Then he tugged the segments apart and passed one, on the flat of his hand, to Bathsheba. They shared the orange in pleasant silence.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last five paragraphs? Start with the sentence 'So his desire: more than an accidental engagement as blood fills his veins'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: So his desire: more than an accidental engagement as blood fills his veins. It had and has its local and particular objects as well as something ever beyond them. When the local and particular are taken away (by their free will, by a tyrant's intervention, by death) there is and was nothing else for it but to go beyond. The alternative is to be left staring at an empty wall.
  It has been his experience that an empty wall thwarts sight and (when the wall is in a prison) action; but it does not thwart imagination. Rather the reverse. When the Sword of Calais sliced through that little neck what had he not seen in his mind, on the screen of that plain (though pitted) wall? Though his bodily eyes had only viewed the scene from an obscuring distance, he'd seen her hands, her strange little dewclawed hands, fly up to her neck one last time, taking the measure of it; the regal way she shed her cloak, handing it to one of her weeping ladies, comforting her, showing her how it was to be done. He saw her look about her, taking in the huge crowd that had gathered to watch her last performance. He thought this would have rallied her, provoked her into some kind of stance or held her in a prepared resolve. Would there have been a friend there among the crowd (had he been there, he could have been that friend) to catch the flung posy of her last words as he had caught Cromwell's? He had seen the cloth unable to soak up all her blood. He saw the look of surprise on her face as the blade sliced through her neck as the clever swordsman distracted her gaze, dividing soul from body before mind knew.
  Here in this unadorned room he could picture Bess Darrell, sitting or standing, kneeling or walking. He pictured her lifting the bedcovers to invite him in, felt the soft gust of warmth that breathed out, as from an oven opened. He heard her low laughter and soft breath.
  They were fools who thought that the best cure for madness was a dark room. Darkness never quenched the imagination of anyone who had that faculty. Imagination thrived on absence.
  Wyatt is a haunted and haunting poet. I am grateful to Patricia Milne-Henderson for allowing me to walk around the grounds of Clifton Maybank House, near Sherborne in Dorset. It is the former home of Wyatt's friend Sir John Horsey and the place where Wyatt is said to have died. Tessa (I know only this name), the gardener who showed me round, pointed out to me the cherry tree at the edge of a huge bowling green where, she said, she'd 'seen him sometimes'.