Room and Bell IV

Room and Bell IV

Room and Bell IV

In truth, that dreamt-up room has less in common with my
room as it was than it has with those rooms that build themselves
in my mind when I am reading—rooms which, the moment I
pause to examine them, turn out to be made of one or two
furnishings set among struts of light—a notion of depth and
width and height built out of prepositions, out of a speaker’s tone
of voice. Though they are sketched in light, I am conscious of
them not as I would see them but as I would remember the
formation of a room in the dark. My imagination has troubled to
manufacture one detail fully: a blue and white teacup with a
stone fleck in the porcelain an inch from its inside rim. A slightly
tarnished teaspoon in the saucer shows, upside down, the
reflection of a window. These rooms that build themselves in my
mind when I am reading take their effect of truth—which, since
they are not true, is an effect of feeling—from that first room,
which, since it installed itself in me, has stood behind so many
other rooms, concealed itself in so many other places, tricked me
so many times into a feeling of homecoming—which has
travelled so much farther than I have.