Patrick O’Brian
more from Post Captain
A great joy in reading O’Brian is what he can create in a short narrative. Here establishing another aspect of Maturin’s character, who has borrowed a beautiful set of pistols for a duel. He’s on a ‘mild horse’ moving towards dunes on a seashore. He’s reflecting on his experiencing. Aubrey does not reflect.
“There are days - good evening to you, sir’ - a parson went by walking with his cat, the smoke from his pipe keeping him company as he walked - ‘there are days,’ he reflected, ‘when one sees as though one had been blind the rest of one’s life. Such clarity - perfection in everything, not merely in the extraordinary. One lives in the very present moment; lives intently. There is no urge to be doing; being is the highest good. However.’ he said, guiding the horse left-handed into the dunes, ‘doing of some kind there must be.’”
the parson walking by with his cat, ‘the smoke from his pipe keeping him company.’
‘guiding his horse left-handed into the dunes’ If language is inadequate, it’s not the fault of O’Brian
...
“‘I have never know such consistently accurate weapons.’ he said aloud. ‘I wonder, can I still do Dillon’s old trick?’ He took a coin from his pocket, tossed it high, and shot it fair and square on the the top of the rise, between climbing and falling. ‘Charming instruments indeed: I must cover them from the dew.’ The sun had set; the light had so far diminished that the red tongue of flame lit up the mist hollow at each discharge...”
He is about to go into a duel with his close friend over a woman Maturin loves.
“.. he turned to his diary. ‘This is perhaps the final detachment; and this is perhaps the only way to live - free, surprising light and well, no diminution of interest but no commitment: a liberty I have early ever know. Life in its purest form - admirable in every way, only for the fact that it is not living, as I have ever understood the word. How it changes the nature of time! The minutes and the course stretch out; there is leisure to see the movement of the present. I shall walk out beyond Walmer Castle, by way of the sand-dunes: there is a wilderness of time in that arenaceous world.’”