A Haydn symphony had a meaning for the social group that listened to it. A Mahler symphony had a meaning for the man who composed it. Here is the difference between the classical and romantic attitudes to art.

Beckett does not believe in God, though he seems to imply that God has committed an unforgivable sin by not existing.

The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver the trumpets three-wise silverflamed, and there by the door the timps rolling through my guts and out again crunched like candy thunder. Oh, it was wonder of wonders. And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now, came the violin solo above all the other strings, and those strings were like a cage of silk around my bed. Then flute and oboe bored, like worms of like platinum, into the thick thick toffee gold and silver. I was in such bliss, my brothers.

And I sort of frowned about that, thinking. 'You felt ill this afternoon,' he said, 'because you're getting better. When we're healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea. You're becoming healthy, that's all.

But we were all feeling that bit shagged and fagged and fashed, it having been an evening of some small energy expenditure.

Translation is not a matter of words only: it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture.

I chart a little first-list of names, rough synopsis of chapters, and so on. But one daren't overplan; so many things are generated by the sheer act of writing.