“But they never last, the golden days. And it can be sad, the sun in the afternoon, can't it? Yes, it can be sad, the afternoon sun, sad and frightening.”

— Jean Rhys , book Good Morning, Midnight

Source: Good Morning, Midnight

Last update March 23, 2025. History

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Jean Rhys 38

novelist from Dominica 1890–1979

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Source: Good Morning, Midnight

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“The wounds were burning like suns
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“When the sad sun sinks,
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Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) French Symbolist poet

Nurse.
Hérodiade (1898)
Context: When the sad sun sinks,
It shall pierce through the body of wax till it shrinks!
No sunset, but the red awakening
Of the last day concluding everything
Struggles so sadly that time disappears,
The redness of apocalypse, whose tears
Fall on the child, exiled to her own proud
Heart, as the swan makes its plumage a shroud
For its eyes, the old swan, and is carried away
From the plumage of grief to the eternal highway
Of its hopes, where it looks on the diamonds divine
Of a moribund star, which never more shall shine!