You reach a point in learning a language – usually sometime shortly after you can successfully ask and understand the way to the lavatory – when one word, usually a little word, will trip you up in supposed subtleties, tumble you into an ecstasy of confusion out of all proportion to its importance [...]
Our ancestors wrote prose in long, beautiful sentences, convoluted like curls; although we still learn to do it that way in school, we write in short sentences that cut more quickly to the heart of the matter; and no one in the world can free his thinking from the manner in which his time wears [...]
When reading, I don’t always look up the words I don’t know the meaning of – usually because context is enough, but often just because of laziness. This habitual sloth set me on a false scent with the following passage:
Nobody, probably not even Kathy, need ever be aware of his spiritual child Katherine Volkov; unless [...]
At the end of March there was a puff piece about Anne Carson in the NY Times, occasioned by a staged reading of her translation of, I think, Euripides’ Hekabe.1 One short passage attracted my attention:
For all this, Ms. Carson said, she is not a poet. ‘Homer’s a poet,’ she said. ‘I would say I [...]
‘As is’
he she we they you you you I her so pronouns begin the dance called washing whose name derives from an alchemical fact that after a small stillness there is a small stir after great stillness a great stir
– Anne Carson
meme (ex machina):*
Intrigue me?1 The impression is that the lay-out of the whole area resembled that of the Seraglio in Constantinople, with palaces, barracks, and other royal buildings set in an area of parkland.2 A house of sin you may call it, but not a house of darkness, for the candles are never out; and [...]
adventurous students always read classics.
fragment of a dialogue
Is there a reason you haven’t bathed in almost a week?
Is there a reason you consider my personal hygiene to be of general interest?
Answer the question.
Yes. There is a reason.
Would you care to elaborate?
When have I ever cared to elaborate?
Let me rephrase: please share your reasons…
…for not bathing?
Quite.
I’m not sure I can [...]
::
ego hoc feci mm–mmviii
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