Delicate Declining

Getting turned down in literary fashion...

At Andrebrook Alice at last found a friend who shared her intellectual and artistic passions. She and Janet sometimes stayed up all night together, talking and painting. One night they got illicitly drunk and Janet let Alice put an arm around her. But when Alice tried to kiss her, she pushed her away and wrote on a scrap of paper, "No, no, go not to Lethe, neither drink ..."

It was years before Alice read Keats and recognized the quote, but the words haunted her. [She made a watercolour incorporating the words.]

Interesting to note that the word "drink" doesn't appear in Keats Ode on Melancholy though it is implied in all the references to sipping and imbibing. What makes this misquotation interesting in the context of a pass and its refusal is the word that "drink" occludes — "twist". And the sentence continues on the next line in which reference is made to the poisonous wolfsbane (aconite or monkshood) ...

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
        Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;

For more on Alice's adventures and her writing career, see Julie Phillips, James Tiptree Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon.

And so for day 375
24.12.2007