Nightwood by Djuna Barnes

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Hi! Nightwood by Djuna Barnes...

Maybe too many questions, but.......

Then walking in the Prater he had been seen carrying in a conspicuously clenched fist the exquisite handkerchief of yellow and black linen that cried aloud of the ordinance of 1468, issued by one Pietro Barbo, demanding that, with a rope about its neck, Guido’s race should run in the Corso for the amusement of the Christian populace, while ladies of noble birth, sitting upon spines too refined for rest, arose from their seats, and, with the red-gowned cardinals and the Monsignori, applauded with that cold yet hysterical abandon of a people that is at once unjust and happy, the very Pope himself shaken down from this hold on heaven with the laughter of a man who forgoes his angels that he may recapture the beast.

This memory and the handkerchief that accompanied it had wrought in Guido(as certain flowers brought to a pitch of florid ecstasy no sooner attain their specific type than they fall into its decay) the sum total of what is the Jew.

He had walked, hot, incautious and damned, his eyelids quivering over the thick eyeballs, black with the pain of a participation that, four centuries later, made him a victim, as he felt the echo in his own throat of that cry running the Piazza Montanara long ago, “Roba vecchia!” – the degradation by which his people had survived.

its neck: it = his race ?

the Corso : What is Corso?

What does this “sitting upon spines” mean?

that is at once unjust = ‘that’ means ‘a people’?

with the laughter of a man = by the laughter of a man?

recapture the beast = recapture the Jews?

its decay : it = a pitch of florid ecstasy?

Nightwood by Djuna Barnes

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