It will
be a delicate, yet undeviating record of the spiritual awareness of the
generation that perished in the war. It will be a work of genius, for
the essence that must be captured within it is volatile beyond belief,
almost beyond imagination. We know of its existence by signs hardly more
material than a dream-memory of beating wings or an instinctive, yet all
but inexplicable refusal of that which has been offered us in its stead.
The autobiographer-novelists have been legion, yet we turn from them all
with a slow shake of the head. 'No, it was not that. Had we lost only
that we could have forgotten. It was not that.'
No, it was the spirit that troubled, as in dream, the waters of the
pool, some influence which trembled between silence and a sound, a
precarious confidence, an unavowed quest, a wisdom that came not of
years or experience, a dissatisfaction, a doubt, a devotion, some
strange presentiment, it may have been, of the bitter years in store, in
memory an ineffable, irrevocable beauty, a visible seal on the forehead
of a generation.
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