#sherston's progress

[mr-oscarwilde]

Happy birthday Siegfried Sassoon! (b. 8 September 1886)

And my last words shall be these – that it is only from the inmost silences of the heart that we know the world for what it is, and ourselves for what the world has made us.

[thefoxhuntingman]

Hi, just wanted to tell you that thanks to your blog I finally started reading Sassoon (though I started with 'Memoirs of an Infantry Officer' and realized it was the second book in a trilogy only like 100 pages through it huh), and I think his writing is absolutely wonderful. So, thank you ;)

Aww, that’s great to hear, thanks for letting me know 😍

Actually, it may be even better that you started with Memoirs of an Infantry Officer because in my opinion it’s the best book out of the three (Sherston’s Progress is close second). I like the last chapters of Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man – when he finally goes to war – best because fox hunting and horse racing aren’t too exciting to read about 😝

[happilyhadesbound]

obsessed with Siegfried Sassoon's George Sherston's plan to resist a future German occupation in 1936

[happilyhadesbound]

i thought Sherston's Progress would be a less emotional read after finishing In the Springtime of the Year but he spends the first fourty pages talking about Rivers... fuck me dude i'm cryibg about a psychologist who died a hundred years ago

[thefoxhuntingman]

A ruminator really needs two lives; one for experiencing and another for thinking it over.

Siegfried Sassoon, Sherston’s Progress

[thefoxhuntingman]

One evening I asked whether he [Rivers] thought I was suffering from shell-shock. 'Certainly not,' he replied. 'What have I got then?' 'Well, you appear to be suffering from an anti-war complex.'

Siegfried Sassoon, Sherston’s Progress

[thefoxhuntingman]

Looking back from to-day, however, I am interested, not in what my own feelings were, but in what Rivers had been thinking about the decision which he had left me so entirely free to make. Had he been asked, he would probably have replied, in his driest manner, that he considered it to be his duty, as an army medical officer, to 'cure me of my pacifist errors' (though one of our jokes had been about the humorous situation which would arise if I were to convert him to my point of view). Whatever he had been thinking while away on leave, he was there, with his gentle assurance of helpfulness, and all my grand gesture exuberance fade out at once. It was impossible not to be natural with Rivers. All I knew was that he was my father-confessor, as I called him (...)

Siegfried Sassoon, Sherston’s Progress

[fabular-mr-fox]

And when the windows were dark and I could see the stars, I still sat there with my golf bag between my knees, alone with what now seemed an irrefutable assurance that going back to the War as soon as possible was my only chance of peace.

Sherston's Progress, Siegfried Sassoon