My Virtual Reading Room

Ah, is that how it works? A pity Sir ACD didn't live a few years longer, I could not but wonder what he would've said of the _Second_ World War...

I shall have to re-read "The Second Coming", been a while...thanks.

Having re-read "The Second Coming", that one reads a little differently to me, more like "all these terrible things are happening, surely the Second Coming must be near at hand, as had been foretold"--the period of great suffering, strife and war that is supposed to precede the second coming...

(in fact, the earliest example of such a statement is in Sebastian Brant's "Ship of Fools", from the 1400s--"everywhere there is falsehood, deceit, and treachery--might this not be the Anti-Christ's reign?")

...whereas Doyle's is just remarking on how thrilling the war is, and oh, to be sure, it is thrilling to ride on the crest of a wave of adrenaline, that is not to be disputed...

...as Pushkin wrote in one of his "Little Tragedies", the one titled "Feast during the Plague":

There is an ecstasy in battle,
And at the of edge of darkest chasm,
And in the enraged ocean
Amidst furious waves and turbulent night,
And in the Arabian sandstorm,
And in a breathing of the Plague

All, all, that is frightening with destruction,
To the mortal’s heart covertly holds
The inexplicable pleasures?
The immortality’s promise, perhaps!
And happy is the one who amidst the turmoil
Can find and feel them.

(translation by Korsakova-Kreyn, doesn't do the original justice but conveys the meaning well)

...A lot, I think, often subconsciously, without our realizing it.

You are most welcome. I shall post more excerpts from his autobiography in the next couple of weeks, there are some very interesting passages, medical and otherwise.