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From a dance hall there met me as I passed by the strains of lively jazz music, hot and raw as the steam of raw flesh. I stopped a moment. This kind of music, much as I detested it, had always had a secret charm for me.
Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf, Bantam Books, New York, 1969, p. 43.
PLACE: Germany
TIME: 1920's
1. Somewhere below I heard a door bang, a glass break, a titter of laughter die away, mixed with the angry hurried noise of motorcars starting up. And somewhere, at an indeterminable distance and height, I heard a laugh ring out, an extraordinarily clear and merry peal of laughter. Yet it was eerie and strange. It was a laugh made of crystal and ice, bright and radiant, but cold and inexorable. Where had I heard this laugh before? I could not tell.
2. Far up in unknown space rang out that strange and eerie laughter.
3. He laughed aloud as he spoke, a short laugh, but it went through me like a shot. It was the same bright and peculiar laugh that I had heard before from below.
4. ... Ha! Ha! (Again that laugh, beautiful and frightful!)
5. How the weird man laughed! And what a cold and eerie laugh! It was noiseless and yet everthing was shattered by it.
Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf, Bantam Books Edition, New York, 1969, p. 197, 197, 201, 203, 241.
PLACE: Germany
TIME: 1920's
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