coming about in an old catboat in a light wind. The thick canvas
mainsail lopes over.
CB: Here we have a picture of you doing research and enjoying
the research.
NM: Not all research is that enjoyable. In the Lepsius Denkenmahler
you go through maybe 100 pages of tomb drawings on all the
details of the battle of Kadesh. You���ll see donkeys screwing each
other, men fighting, a horse nosing out a soldier���s food he shouldn���t
be eating in an encampment.
CB: To count the dead, the hands of the fallen are cut off and
massed in a big pile, and a lion eats these hands, crunching the
bones, and gets so sick he dies. Is that depicted in the drawings?
NM: I forget where that detail came from. I don���t think I made
it up, but I might have. I don���t know. The research all goes into
the book, and I don���t want to take it along with me when I���m
finished. I want to empty my mind for the next piece of research.
CB: On your desk here are stacked the works of Goethe, along
with a big German dictionary. You are presently learning German
to read Faust in the original. You are an old dog who learns new
tricks. Learning for you is connected with imaginative expansion.
NM: The mind is like a muscle. If you exercise your brain, it
stays more in working order, as you get older, than if you don���t
exercise it. I once wrote: ���There was that law of life, so cruel and
so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the
same.��� That���s near the end of The Deer Park. Generally, when
you write a good line, it is for others to lead their lives by, because
HYLAND
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