"Scratchy brisk rain irritable as tinder"

Regular readers will know of my fondness for these things. (It is the sort of thing I find easy to memorize, too; for instance, I will not easily forget that the bus from Innsbruck airport to the city stops at "Fischerhaeuslweg" and "Klinik," though I only rode it twice.) Here is the map in the original Norwegian (inter alia I am pleased to note that Norwegian for "brook" is cognate with "beck"). Here is a related old post.

Letters from (mostly children's) authors to kids. (Failing which, there's nothing but the wall / of public lavatories on which to scrawl.)

Peter McDonald reviews the new Geoffrey Hill books. I do not mean to direct you to the review, which is defensive and boring, just to cull a few quotes. (The books seem dreadful.) But here is Hill on Yeats: "Yeats with his clangour of despotic beauty." And there are these snippets:

‘Passchendaele’s chill mud at a gulp engorging | Men and redhot rashers of sizzling metal’ (XXXV), ‘long demolished | Iron bridges clamped over backstreet inlets | Tremor to footfalls’ (XXXVI),  ‘Bracken-guarded airfields where now the pigeons | Ponderous, wingladen, in near-botched take-offs, | Rattle the spinneys’ (XLII), ‘Glasstight black porter’ (XLIX)

And finally, a delightful stanza:

Broken that first kiss by the race to shelter,
Scratchy brisk rain irritable as tinder;
Hearing light thrum faintly the chords of laurel
Taller than we were.

(Cf. Bishop's moonlight, "hairy, scratchy, splintery" and Auden on being "taller today.")

"A sadder hue then the powder of Venice glass"

Sorry about the nonexistent blogging lately; I have been slightly more active on tumblr, but a combination of post-thesis work and lassitude and the thought of a few substantive posts I've been putting off writing have combined to keep things very quiet. (A rule of thumb is that quotes offered w/o comment go there unless they are about Coleridge's drug use.) This is not a substantive post, just a few snippets of early modern science. First, I stumbled upon a piece on the "solar microscope" ca. 1816; the list it ends with is particularly worthwhile if one likes lists:

Another good bit (apart from the food-related one) is on the breeding habits of lice:

And the crystallization of salts reminded me of the bit in Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica on whether all crystals are forms of ice. I am not sure anyone will find this bit as charming as I did, but it is of lexicographical interest ("the stillicidous dependencies of ice"!), and then solidity-the-concept is one of my very oldest obsessions (I even wrote a dreadful term paper my freshman year on Locke and solidity...):

Pliny is positive in this Opinion: Crystallus fit gelu vehementius concreto: [...] Neither doth there any thing properly conglaciate but water, or watery humidity; for the determination of quick-silver is properly fixation, that of milk coagulation, and that of oyl and unctuous bodies, only incrassation [...]

[...] Ice although it seemeth as transparent and compact as Crystal, yet is it short in either; for its atoms are not concreted into continuity, which doth diminish its translucency; it is also full of spumes and bubbles, which may abate its gravity. And therefore waters frozen in Pans, and open Glasses, after their dissolution do commonly leave a froth and spume upon them, which are caused by the airy parts diffused in the congealable mixture which uniting themselves and finding no passage at the surface, do elevate the mass, and make the liquor take up a greater place then before: as may be observed in Glasses filled with water, which being frozen, will seem to swell above the brim.

[...] As for colour, although Crystal in his pellucid body seems to have none at all, yet in its reduction into powder, it hath a vail and shadow of blew; and in its courser pieces, is of a sadder hue then the powder of Venice glass; and this complexion it will maintain although it long endure the fire. [...]

that continuity of parts is the cause of perspicuity, it is made perspicuous by two ways of experiment. That is, either in effecting transparency in those bodies which were not so before, or at least far short of the additional degree: So Snow becomes transparent upon liquation, so Horns and Bodies resolvable into continued parts or gelly. The like is observable in oyled paper, wherein the interstitial divisions being continuated by the accession of oyl, it becometh more transparent, and admits the visible rayes with less umbrosity. Or else the same is effected by rendering those bodies opacous, which were before pellucid and perspicuous.

So Glass which was before diaphanous, being by powder reduced into multiplicity of superficies, becomes an opacous body, and will not transmit the light. So it is in Crystal powdered, and so it is also before; for if it be made hot in a crucible, and presently projected upon water, it will grow dim, and abate its diaphanity; for the water entering the body, begets a division of parts, and a termination of Atoms united before unto continuity.

The ground of this Opinion might be, first the conclusions of some men from experience; for as much as Crystal is found sometimes in rocks, and in some places not much unlike the stirrious^[14] or stillicidious dependencies of Ice. Which notwithstanding may happen either in places which have been forsaken or left bare by the earth, or may be petrifications, or Mineral indurations, like other gemms, proceeding from percolations of the earth disposed unto such concretions.

Tit-bits

Jonathon Green appreciates Urquhart, the miraculous 17th cent. translator of Rabelais, with (appropriately) a list:

So gross a member doubtless merited so extensive a list: ‘One of them would call it her pillicock, her fiddle-diddle, her staff of love, her tickle-gizzard, her gentle-titler. Another, her sugar-plum, her kingo, her old rowley. her touch-trap, her flap dowdle. Another again, her brand of coral, her placket-racket, her Cyprian sceptre, her tit-bit, her bob-lady. And some of the other women would give these names, my Roger, my cockatoo, my nimble-wimble, bush-beater, claw-buttock, evesdropper, pick-lock, pioneer, bully-ruffin, smell-smock, trouble-gusset, my lusty live sausage, my crimson chitterlin, rump-splitter, shove-devil, down right to it, stiff and stout, in and to, at her again, my coney-borrow-ferret. wily-beguiley, my pretty rogue.’

Here is a passage once tumbl'd from Rabelais; here is the useful Gutenberg e-text of Book 2, and here is a list (of books).

And I should link to Stephen Burt in memory of Adrienne Rich, and also to Stephen Burt on Rich in the LRB last month (the latter might be gated; is notable mostly for quoting paysage moralise of Rich's, beginning "Here is a map of our country"). The New Yorker has linked to some charming old poems of hers, which I distinctly prefer to the drab programmatic ranting that is so much of her oeuvre. I will also link, perhaps cruelly, to an old letter of hers in the NYRB that to my mind perfectly captures some of her flaws; and also, to make up for that, to "Snapshots of a daughter-in-law," which is her best poem that I'm aware of.

Tales and Tayles; ideas of ordure

I have been bad about closing tabs -- have also been meaning to do some posts that involve writing rather than linking, but this term has been overwhelming. NB I'll be in Boston next week for the APS meeting. Anyway here are some links:

1. 30 photos of a Chinese sex toy factory (via clusterflock)

2. Harold Bloom reminisces about Auden (birthday today, as was DFW's apparently):

The poet arrived in a frayed, buttonless overcoat, which my wife insisted on mending. His luggage was an attaché case containing a large bottle of gin, a small one of vermouth, a plastic drinking cup, and a sheaf of poems. After being supplied with ice, he requested that I remind him of the amount of his reading fee. A thousand dollars had been the agreed sum, a respectable honorarium more than forty years ago. He shook his head and said that as a prima donna he could not perform, despite the prior arrangement. Charmed by this, I phoned the college master--a good friend--who cursed heartily but doubled the sum when I assured him that the poet was as obdurate as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest. Informed of this yielding, Auden smiled sweetly and was benign and brilliant at dinner, then at the reading, and as he went to bed after we got home.

(A few addenda: i. I should really have a separate tag for this sort of Auden post as opposed to the posts that quote him. ii. A good source for more stories of this kind, seen from a glancing angle, is the Lowell-Bishop correspondence. iii. Bloom is not fond of Auden's work, but has always seemed to me a pretty good judge of the relative merits of different Auden poems; in particular, he correctly rates Letter to Lord Byron and the limestone poem as among A's best. (Re which, see also Anthony Hecht.))

3. From the lardr, animal-specific terms for tails and excrement (unearthed by Calista):

THe tayle of Harte, Bucke, Rowe, or any other Deare, is to be called the Syngle. The Tayle of a Goate, is plain∣ly called his Tayle. The tayle of a Bore, is to be termed his wreath. The tayle of an Hare and Conney, is called their Skut. The tayle of a Foxe is called his Bush, or (as some vse to say) his hollywater sprinkle. The tayle of a Wolfe is to be called his Stearne. Of the rest I haue not read.
and

The termes proper for the ordure and naturall excrements of chaces.

IT is a thing highly obserued and not here to be omitted, that the ordure of euery beaste of chace & Uenerie hath his proper terme. The reason is, by cause theyr ordure and excrements are one principall marke whereby we know the place of their feede, and their estate. So that a Huntesman in talke or makyng of his reportes shall be often constreyned to rehearse the same. Of an Harte therfore, and of all Deare the ordure is called Fewmets or Fewmishing: Of a Gote, and of an Hare the Crotising or Crot∣tels: Of a Bore the Lesses: Of a Foxe, and all other vermine, The Fyaunts: Of an Otter the Spraynts. And I haue neyther readde nor heard what it is termed of a Wolfe or a Beare: neyther is it greatly materiall.

See also: animal-specific verbs for slicing-up. 

Word-hoards and lard-hoards

1. In the wake of this exchange, Calista and I have been trading literary sightings of lard, pigs, and/or gross food broadly construed; we've recently started a new tumblr (currently titled "A Child's Larder of Verse" though really there isn't much verse there) dedicated to these. No by-lines as these would be purely embarrassing for me. Swift (Jonathan, not Tom) is the genius of the place.

2. A fascinating Language Log post about the writer Paul West who "emerged from [a] stroke with a near-total obliteration of language" and how he made the best of his way back to language:

Oddly, it was often the most obscure words that were easiest to recover. He struggled with words like blanket or bed, or his wife's name Diane, words that you would think over time should have seeped into his genes. Nevertheless, he could recruit words like postillion or tardigrades to get an idea across. This led to some counter-productive interactions with a speech therapist. Since aphasics often produce nonsense words without realizing that they aren't real words, one of the goals of therapy is to give the patient feedback on which words are real. But West would often produce bona fide words that were unknown to the therapist.  [...]

The intimate wordplay between West and [his wife Diane] Ackerman also eventually resumed, with West fashioning novel terms of endearment as gifts to his wife. The offerings were delightful. Deprived of the usual routes to language, and along with them, the common clichés that many of us struggle to shed, West bestowed on his wife exquisite pet names such as: My Little Bucket of Hair; Commendatore de le Pavane Mistletoe; Dark-Eyed Junco, My Little Bunko; Diligent Apostle of Classic Stanzas.  And at one point, the man uttered what has to be the most searingly romantic sentence ever uttered in history, by anyone, in any language:

"You are the hapax legomenon of my life."

"Irretrievable hippopotamus"

From Janet Malcolm's collages (NYRB) based on "the papers of an émigré psychiatrist who practiced in New York in the late 1940s and 1950s":

Test words for dysarthria

Royal Artillery
Methodist Episcopal
West Register Street
[crossed out]
Massachusetts Constitution
Righteous Retribution
Irish Constabulary
Irretrievable Hippopotamus

And then there was also this (under "ouch ouch disease"):

"Prick-eared rogue, copper-nose priest"

Priest-appropriate insults from the 17th cent. (LRB, gated):

A Somerset churchgoer in 1632 complains that ‘there was nothing done at prayer time in the said church of West Lidford but tooting upon the organs, and that it delighteth him as much to hear his horse fart as to hear the said organs go.’ In an argument with the parson of Dogmerfield in Hampshire over a tithe in 1581, Rowland Bowrer declares: ‘Thou art a covetous man … Go take Mother Canning by the cunt again!’ Haigh spends several pages on the insults suffered by clergymen, such as ‘stinking knave priest’, ‘scurvy, stinking, shitten boy’, ‘totter legged and pilled priest’, ‘Scottish jack’, ‘jack sauce and Welsh rogue’, ‘a runagately rogue and a prick-eared rogue’, ‘polled, scurvy, forward, wrangling priest’, ‘wrangler and prattler’, ‘black-coat knave’, ‘drunken-faced knave’ and ‘copper-nose priest’. [...] There are many presentments for misbehaviour in church: drunkenness, brawling, gossiping, vomiting, scoffing at the minister, pissing in another man’s hat (Leigh, Essex, 1627), or ‘extreme sleeping’ (Fering, Sussex, 1613). Sex offences were common: fornication, adultery, bastard children, cross-dressing, lewd talk.

Unrelated (see pic above): foxes repurposing an abandoned conveyor belt as a slide. Via zunguzungu.

Off-scourings

1. Calista's post on Marvell brings up, at one remove, some more "ambergrease" -- the poem is "A character of Holland," the first two lines are famous, the rest I had forgotten:

Holland, that scarce deserves the name of Land,
As but th'Off-scouring of the Brittish Sand;
And so much Earth as was contributed
By English Pilots when they heav'd the Lead;
Or what by th' Oceans slow alluvion fell,
Of shipwrackt Cockle and the Muscle-shell;
This indigested vomit of the Sea
Fell to the Dutch by just Propriety.
Glad then, as Miners that have found the Oar,
They with mad labour fish'd the Land to Shoar;
And div'd as desperately for each piece
Of Earth, as if't had been of Ambergreece;
Collecting anxiously small Loads of Clay,
Less then what building Swallows bear away;
Transfursing into them their Dunghil Soul.

2. Via Twitter, the most magnificent of drop-down lists, viz. the "salutation" list in the Royal Opera House registration form:

(The only title that competes in length with "the dowager Marchioness of" is "HE the French Ambassador M.")

"Alwayes foaming, or drivelling"

From Dainty Ballerina, a 17th century description of the "nature and character of a drunkard," notable for the hilariously anticlimactic way it ends:

A Gentleman of worth, rising to make water, could finde no fitter place to do it in than the chimney; where, being a few live embers, he fell downe, and not being able to rise againe, had his belly puckerd together like a sachell before the Chamberlaine could come to helpe him. Whereupon, being in great torture, he dranke twenty two double jugs of beer, and so died, roaring and crying that he was damned. Some fall down dead as a dore naile. Some againe fall into the water, and are drowned, as is commonly seene. Some fall and batter their faces, bruise their bodies, breake their armes, their legs, and many breake their necks in the very act of drunkennesse. Others are wounded, beaten, and many times murdered, as often times they stab and murder others.

The drunkard commonly hath a swollen and inflamed face beset with goodly jowles; swimming, running, glaring, goggle eyes, bleared and red; a mouth nasty with offensive fumes, alwayes foaming, or drivelling; a feverish body; a sicke and giddy braine; a mind dispersed; a boyling stomacke; rotten teeth; stinking breath; a drumming eare; a palsied hand; gouty, staggering legs, that would go, but cannot; a drawling, stammering, tongue, clamped to the roofe and gumms; (not to speake of his odious gestures, lothsome nastinesse, or beastly behaviour, his belching, hickups, vomitings, ridiculous postures, and how easily he is knocked down).

Re drowning while shitfaced: I am reminded of this horrifying story about the epidemic of drowning in Russia during last year's heatwave.

"A Wail from the Drunkard's Hovel"

Friend and sometime Beowulf classmate Calista was kind enough to provide

a few titles from the twenty or thirty feet of late-19th-c prohibitionist books. I capitalize because they all do, though in gilt.

ILLUSTRIOUS ABSTAINERS
DRUNKEN COMPORTMENT
BACCHUS DETHRONED
KING ALCOHOL DETHRONED
BIBLE TEMPERANCE IS NOT TOTAL ABSTINENCE
SUBSTITUTES FOR THE SALON (I suppose this isn't a reverse of the standard saloon/salon mistake)
SIX NIGHTS WITH THE WASHINGTONIANS, AND OTHER TEMPERANCE TALES
THE MEANING OF THE TERM "WHISKY" (it's >1000 pages long)
THE COLD-WATER-MAN; or, a Pocket Companion for the Temperate (by Doctor Springwater of North America)
GRAPPLING WITH THE MONSTER: The Curse and the Cure of Strong Drink
FINAL DRIVE ON BOOZE
IF NOT THE SALOON, WHAT?
A FRIENDLY ADMONITION TO THE DRINKERS OF BRANDY
THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH
THE ENFORCEMENT OF LIQUOR LAWS: A Necessary Protection to the Indians.
A DISCOURSE ON THE BOTTLE
The WAR OF FOUR THOUSAND YEARS; being a connected history of the various efforts made to suppress the vice of intemperance in all ages of the world; from the foundation of the class of Nazarites, by Moses, to the institution of the order of the Sons of temperance, inclusive; with a full account of the origin, progress, and present prospects of the latter institution.
A SOBER ACT OF PARLIAMENT
STRONG DRINK (I can't describe how wonderfully decadent the cover for this is: a very deep sapphire with the sexiest and most gilted typeface to come out of 1900
THE TRUE PATH;  OR GOSPEL OF TEMPERANCE
PUBLIC HOUSES; OR, THE MISERIES OF INTEMPERANCE
TALKS ON TEMPERANCE, THE FOUNTAIN OF TEMPERANCE, A TEXT BOOK OF TRUE TEMPERANCE etc
a whole bunch of "Anti-Bacchus" prize-winning essays
The Life and Times of THE LATE DEMON RUM (I'm fairly sure this was mis-shelved and is actually a boozy retrospective; but wish it were straightforward)
WINNING THE FIGHT AGAINST DRINK
INTEMPERANCE: THE IDOLATRY OF BRITAIN
SHALL I DRINK?

"A Discourse on the Bottle" is a pleasantly ambiguous title. And as she points out, "there is an essay to be written, some time, about the beards of these men."