John Fowles

From The Magus

I

t was a Sunday in late May, blue as a bird’s wing. I climbed up the goat-paths to the island’s ridge, from where the green froth of the pine-tops rolled two miles down to the coast. The sea stretched like a silk carpet across to the shadowy wall of mountains on the mainland to the west, a wall that reverberated away south, fifty miles to the horizon, under the vast belt of empyrean. It was an azure world, stupendously pure and as always when I stood on the central ridge of the island and saw it before me, I forgot most of my troubles. I walked along the central ridge, westwards, between the two vast views north and south. Lizards flashed up the pine trunks like living emerald necklaces. There was thyme and rosemary, and other herbs; bushes with flowers like dandelions dipped in sky, a wild, lambent blue. After a while I came to a place where the ridge fell away south in a small near-precipitous bluff. I always used to sit on the brink there, to smoke a cigarette and survey the immense expanse of sea and mountains. Almost as soon as I sat down that Sunday, I saw that something in the view had changed. Below me, halfway along the south coast of the island, there was the bay with three small cottages. From this bay the coast ran on west-wards in a series of low headlands and hidden coves. Immediately to the west of the bay with the cottages the ground rose steeply into a little cliff that ran inland some hundred of yards; a crumbled and creviced reddish wall; as if it was some fortification for the solitary villa that lay on headland beyond. All I knew of this house was that it belonged to a presumably well-to-do Athenian, who used it only in high summer. Because of an intervening rise in the pine forest, one could see no more than the flat roof of the place from the central ridge.

Notes and exercises:

1.   Learn the spelling of the following words in which the “s” is silent:

island	debris	viscount	Arkansas	faux-pas	aisle
apropos	demesne	chamois	patois	viscountess	corps
puisne	bourgeois	chassis	bas-relief	rendezvous	isle

2.   In the following words the diphthong [ou] is rendered by the digraph “oa”: coast, coal, shoal, goad, boat, toad, toast, roast, load, road, soap, soak, oak, croak.

3.   Some nouns of Latin origin which end in “–us” in the singular form their plural by changing it into “–i”, pronounced [ai]: magus—magi. Similarly: alumni, bacilli, fungi, radii, genii, etc.

4.   The following pairs of words are often confused. Pay attention to their spelling and say what they mean:

pail—pale	expanse—expense	councillor—counsellor	literate—literal
industrious—industrial	moral—morale	principal—principle	suite—suit
official—officious	prophesy—prophecy	polite—political	respectable—respectful
corps—corpse	misused—disused	diary—dairy	stationery—stationary
efficient—effective	social—sociable	practicable—practical	loath—loathe
route—rout	irreverent—irrelevant	practise—practice	canvass—canvas
respectively—respectfully	artist—artiste	liqueur—liquor	chocolate—chocolates

5.   Spell the words given in phonetic transcription:

a)       The two columns of the army advancing along separate [ru:ts] were [´rautid] by combined actions of three enemy divisions.

b)      The [´skeptisizm] of Montaigne played a certain role in the history of philosophy.

c)       “This is the [´sol¶m] truth that I had nothing to do with that affair,” said Ada.

d)      The children were [´fæsineitid] by the beauty of the Christmas tree.

e)       In what way does Nick spend his [´lez¶(r)] time?

f)        “This little [´vil¶n] has again cheated a dime out of me,” Mr. King said jokingly.

6.         Word study:

empyrean   the highest heaven; the visible heavens

lambent      moving over the surface with soft radiance (of a flame or light); shining softly (of the eyes, the sky); gently brilliant (of humour, wit)

cove           a small bay

7.   Translate the following expressions and use them in sentences of your own:

to give trouble, to get a lot of trouble over one’s work, to get into trouble, to save a lot of trouble, I’m sorry to have put you to all this trouble, Asking for trouble again?, to have trouble with somebody, he may make trouble for you, trouble is brewing (trouble is likely to occur): I’m afraid there’s trouble brewing over that speech you made at the meeting yesterday, trouble in store (trouble likely to occur at some later time): I’m afraid you have trouble in store with that child.

Here are some synonymous expressions meaning “to get somebody into trouble.” Try to find their Bulgarian equivalents, if any: to bring somebody to a fine/handsome/pretty pass, to bring somebody to grief, to get somebody in a box, to get/land/put somebody in a pretty pickle, to get somebody in Dutch, to get somebody into a corner, to get/land/put somebody in/into a hole, to get somebody into a scrape, to put/place somebody into a spot, to put somebody in Queer street, to put somebody in the cart, to be in the soup