Nightwood Chapter 7 | Go Down, Matthew (Part I | 112-130)

Chapter Summary

The Doctor visits Nora, who is still lamenting her relationship with Robin. Nora writes incessantly to Robin and the Doctor beseeches her to stop - to put down her pen. He launches into his twisting and turning speech and tells the tale of a whore in London and speaks of his own struggle with sexuality - of his battle with God in it. He implores at a church while exposing himself (he takes out his 'Tiny O'Toole), "I am not able to stay permanent unless you help me, O Book of Concealment! C'est le plaisir qui me bouleverse!" (It is pleasure that shatters me!) (p. 120).

Nora recounts the final hours of her relationship with Robin. Nora goes to visit Jenny Petherbridge. Jenny's house is a haunt of Robin - a picture of Robin as a baby hangs on the wall (which had gone missing from Nora and Robin's) and a baby doll on the bed. Of the doll Nora says, "We give death to a child when we give it a doll - it's the effigy and the shroud; when a woman gives it to a woman, it is the life they cannot have, it is their child, sacred and profane..." (p. 128) She goes on:

"When I got home Robin had been waiting, knowing, because I was late, that something was wrong. I said, 'It is over - I can't go on. You have always lied to me, and you have denied me to her. I can't stand it anymore."

"She stood up then, and went into the hall. She jerked her coat off the hook and I said, 'Have you nothing to say to me?' She turned her face to me. It was like something once beautiful found in a river - and flung herself out of the door." (p. 128)

Terra damnata et maledicta! (p. 113): Damned and cursed earth

papelero (p. 114): stationer

Saxon-les-Bains (p. 114) - Switzerland

Madame de Staël (p. 114): a French-speaking Swiss author living in Paris and abroad. She influenced literary tastes in Europe at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (p. 116): a 6-volume work by Edward Gibbon

grue (p. 118): crane (literally in french)

prie-Dieu (p. 119): a worshiping bench in a church

Turdus musicus (124):


peritoneum (p. 125): In higher vertebrates, the peritoneum is the serous membrane that forms the lining of the abdominal cavity — it covers most of the intra-abdominal organs

'Dead March' in Saul (p. 127): Funeral march by Handel