“I should say in haste that his early poetry gave him the right to think of himself as a giant. But he was also a nutter, one of the manic-depressive type who, when in a downhill phase, accuse themselves loudly of being Hitler. (They never accuse themselves of being the seventh anonymous stormtrooper from the right at a dedication ceremony for the new blood banner in a provincial town twenty miles from Dortmund: they always accuse themselves of being Hitler, just as the people who had previous lives in ancient Egypt always turn out to have been pharaohs or chief priests, and never night-shift workers on the crew that put up the third tallest obelisk in one of the satellite temples at Karnak).”

On Robert Lowell, p. 181
Memoirs, North Face of Soho (2006)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Clive James151

Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator an… 1939–2019

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Clive James151

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