Under the Volcano Read Online Free PDF Page A

Douglas,
Malcolm Lowry: A Biography
(New York, 1973)
    New, William H.,
Malcolm Lowry: A Reference Guide
(London, 1978) Wood, Barry (ed.),
Malcolm Lowry: The Writer and his Critics
(Ottawa, 1980)
    Woodcock, George (ed.)
Malcolm Lowry: The Man and his Work
(Vancouver, 1971)
    Books referred to in this Introduction
    Paz, Octavio,
El laberinto de la soledad
(Fondo de Cultura Económica, México D.F., second edition, 1959)
    Reed, Henry,
The Novel Since 1939
(British Council, 1946)
    Seymour-Smith, Martin,
Who’s Who in Twentieth-Century Literature
(Weidenfeld, 1976)
    To
    MARGERIE, MY WIFE
    W ONDERS are many, and none is more wonderful than man; the power that crosses the white sea, driven by the stormy south wind, making a path under surges that threaten to engulf him; and Earth, the eldest of the gods, the immortal, unwearied, doth he wear, turning the soil with the offspring of horses, as the ploughs go to and fro from year to year.
    And the light-hearted race of birds, and the tribes of savage beasts, and the sea-brood of the deep, he snares in the meshes of his woven toils, he leads captive, man excellent in wit. And he masters by his arts the beast whose lair is in the wilds, who roams the hills; he tames the horse of shaggy mane, he puts the yoke upon its neck, he tames the tireless mountain bull.
    And speech, and wind-swift thought, and all the moods that mould a state, had he taught himself; and how to flee the arrows of the frost, when it is hard lodging under the clear sky, and the arrows of the rushing rain; yea, he ham resource for all; without resource he meets nothing that must come; only against Death shall he call for aid in vain; but from baffling maladies he hath devised escape.
    SOPHOCLES
-Antigone
    Now I blessed the condition of the dog and toad, yea, gladly would I have been in the condition of the dog or horse, for I knew they had no soul to perish under the everlasting weight of Hell or Sin, as mine was like to do. Nay, and though I saw this, felt this, and was broken to pieces with it, yet that which added to my sorrow was, that I could not find with all my soul that I did desire deliverance.
    JOHN BUNYAN —
Grace Abounding for the Chief of Sinners
    W ER immer strebend sich bemuht, den können wir erlösen. Whosoever unceasingly strives upward… him can we save.
    GOETHE

1
    Two mountain chains traverse the republic roughly from north to south, forming between them a number of valleys and plateaux. Overlooking one of these valleys, which is dominated by two volcanoes, lies, six thousand feet above sea-level, the town of Quauhnahuac. It is situated well south of the Tropic of Cancer, to be exact, on the nineteenth parallel, in about the same latitude as the Revillagigedo Islands to the west in the Pacific, or very much farther west, the southernmost tip of Hawaii – and as the port of Tzucox to the east on the Atlantic seaboard of Yucatan near the border of British Honduras, or very much farther east, the town of Juggernaut, in India, on the Bay of Bengal.
    The walls of the town, which is built on a hill, are high, the streets and lanes tortuous and broken, the roads winding. A fine American-style highway leads in from the north but is lost in its narrow streets and comes out a goat track. Quauhnahuac possesses eighteen churches and fifty-seven
cantinas
. It also boasts a golf course and no fewer than four hundred swimming-pools, public and private, filled with the water that ceaselessly pours down from the mountains, and many splendid hotels.
    The Hotel Casino de la Selva stands on a slightly higher hill just outside the town, near the railway station. It is built far back from the main highway and surrounded by gardens and terraces which command a spacious view in every direction. Palatial, a certain air of desolate splendour pervades it. For it is no longer a Casino. You may not even dice for drinks in the bar. The ghosts of ruined gamblers haunt it. No one ever seems to swim in the