(1926–2005)
English novelist and essayist
John Fowles
Older and less planned quarters of cities and towns are profoundly woodlike, and especially in this matter of the mode of their passage through us, the way they unreel, disorientate, open, close, surprise, please. The stupidest mistake of all the many stupid mistakes of twentieth-century architecture has been to forget this ancient model in the more grandiose town-planning. Geometric, linear cities make geometric, linear people; wood cities make human beings.
The Tree (New York: Ecco, 1983), 61.
Being a poet, divining beauty, is like divining nature—a gift. It does not matter if one does not create. It is enough to have the poetic vision. To see the beauty hidden. As I did tonight, hearing someone whistle in the distance as I stood by an open window. I felt all kinds of moods of streets at night, of walking with loved women, of the dark blue and whiteness, and the strange, magical desertion of streets at night. I felt it all exactly in a moment, such a rush of impressions that they can hardly be seized. Algernon Blackwood: “To feel like a poet is not to be a poet.” True, yet, poetry making is not necessarily the printing of words. It is a philosophical outlook, an epicureanism, a hedonism.
John Fowles, entry dated September 24, 1949, in The Journals: Volume One 1949–1965 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 4.