... labels, either for Lushington o r for the read er (O rtru d is shot, b u t h e r death is unrelated to her affair with Lushington). The influence o f Chekhov is generally m ore explicit than elsewhere in Powell s work o f the decade, b u t it is particularly focused through G erhardi s novel Futility...

... was published in the opening decade of the twentieth century, a factious time when Great Britain and the other powerful European empires that once dominated the globe were begin­ ning to fray and crumble because they had expended so much September 2004 67 blood and treasure in futile martial attempts to hold...

... at the odious phrase!) seems in large part driven by the assumption that there's something anti-humanistic and quite possibly inhumane about asking whether what one is doing is working or not, a question that is said to be futile in any case since the creative spirit is too elusive, ethereal...

... and death, also ironically imply the futility, even meaninglessness, of organized religion and its empty mockeries of ritual measured against the cataclysm of war. The m etaphor produced by the startiing juxtaposition of choirs and wailing shells ironically exposes the inadequacy of traditional...

..., or even possibly apocryphal information.10 What he told me I had no reason at the time to disbelieve. In the mid Atlantic on the last voyage west, someone had either jumped or fallen off the stern of the ship. Engines were cut, and then, for a few hours, the Queen circled the spot in an apparently futile...

... Banlieues: suburban. A puff of diesel fum es on an orbital road. The country outside London, w ith its old parks and labyrinths of rhododendron or azalea, futile and tropical pinks in a near-constant dow npour of green, black, and silver rain. Notes for Ban produce: a foamy theater.The lit-up w orld...

... that Franklin s father futilely pursued what he saw as his right to a title, but to no avail. Gabriel Betteredge notes that Franklin s father had the misfortune to be the next heir to a Dukedom, and not be able to prove it, 3 and so ultimately Franklin is indeed declared not to be of noble birth. His surname...

...). Lovelace is a powerseeking solipsist; the Don, on the other hand, represents a futile (but selfless) quest for an illusory ideal: Ce que d o n ju á n aimait, Hassan l am ait peut-être; Ce que d o n ju á n cherchait, Hassan n y croyait pas. (267; C hant deuxièm e; LV) [About that which D o n ju á n would...

... each clime some produce all it s own. Some varying shrub, o r Flow r, or Cast o f Mind. Will Lapland's Boors their futile Toils bestow, To see fair Lemons burnish Hills of Snow? W hen then arose this toilsome waste of time, To tem pt m ean Falshood from h er native Clime? Flatt rys coy weed, in foreign...

.... Winter: My Secret proposes that efforts to decode them are futile. After all, as the speaker tantalizingly points out, Suppose there is no secret after all, / But only ju st my fun. The poem, therefore, appears to draw from several experi­ ences in her father s life: the political, which Christina...

... and the Sewer-men, the Seamstresses and the Stevedores alpha­ betical o rd er should be dem ocratic, b u t at D elia s parties Dons and Duchesses never rub shoulders with Drabs and D rones ( The Years 404).4 The alphabetical project is heroic b u t futile; Mr Ramsay, famously, never reaches the m eaning...

... into that barbaric coun­ try w ith its barbarian ways" (19).The grandm other's prim ary role like that of the Virgin of Guadalupe is as intercessor for godless husbands and children. Her prayers, how ­ ever, are not only condemnatory, pronouncing judgm ent on her entire fam ily, but also futile: rather than going...

... small autonom y beauty, secrecy, pride is futile against the gigantic apparatus she opposes. Yet the limits of patriarchal control, which has worked so smoothly to this point, with the participation of every character in the novel, are exposed by H etty s obdurate silence. N ot only did it fail...

... (34-36). He perceives his spirit as flying above other regions and cities, and from this vantage point he can speculate on the futility o f h u m a n labors. As th e poem progresses, the speaker again idealizes the perfection of both the conception and the carrying out of this eternalized m om ent...

... at they will somehow carry this off. It is futile to paraphrase Plato s laurel-w reathed tragic voice (A gathon). . . . C ontem plated by th e wise, adm ired by the gods; coveted by m en who possess him not, the treasure of those who are blessed by his possession . . . in toil, in fear, in desire, in speech the best...

... clear signals that he expected us to par­ ticipate. We worried that we would look ridiculous if we presented a proposal, and we w o r­ ried that any political capital we had would disappear if we did not do so. In every m eeting, we alternated between a sense of enthusiasm and a sense o f futility...

... of the lock will be read—as “a propitious star,” as a sign of “Venus,” or even as a dark omen—and to the futility of the poet’s attempt to control this ( R , 5.134–35). The addition also activates what operates largely as a dead metaphor in the poem’s shorter version—the rape in the title can be read to mean...

... inter 2 0 1 0 Instead of making a futile effort to finally resolve rights disputes, Justices might better find a way o f letting their barbed-wire asterisks or perhaps some other, less prickly and forbid­ ding visual marker, such as an ellipsis "stand for the beginning o f a new sound," the voice...

... it is futile for scholars to escape from the litera- Decem ber 2000 99 ture they have already paradoxically both incorporated and escaped into (228), Levinson, in particular, errs in con­ demning the incorporative habits of self-deluded consumers and consumptive poets, like Keats, who have lost track o f...

... The revised lines express willingness for self-sacrifice in a wor­ thy venture, whereas the earlier version expresses a m ore futile surrendering of oneself to the world at large. While line 37, in its revised form, m entions the soldier s determ ination to work, the new version of line 38 transfers...