#71455
05/27/2002 1:28 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Melville transforms the shaggy minutiae of life and its
myriad characters (whether Hawthorne, Malcolm, a
besieged wife or a shipmate) into an alembic of wishes,
conflicts and disappointments that, taken together, reflect
him, a mysterious, roiling, poignant writer alive, painfully
alive, in every phrase he wrote." Brenda Wineapple, Melville
at Sea, The Nation (New York), May 20, 2002.
I think the passage quoted using alembic is not well written. An alembic was a flask with a neck
that bent a bit more than ninety degree, used to separate components of a liquid mixture according to their boiling points. Turning characters into an alembic full of abstractions seem a goofy metaphor to me.
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#71456
05/27/2002 1:58 PM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 60
journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 60 |
I wondered if alembic shares a root with lambic, the Belgian beer. Anyone know?
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#71457
05/27/2002 5:55 PM
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
alembic has been much used figuratively, in the sense of a distillery(?).
1790 Burke Fr. Rev. 135 The hot spirit drawn out of the alembick of hell, which in France is now so furiously boiling. 1789 G. White Selborne (1853) II. xxix. 243 In heavy fogs+trees are perfect alembics. 1814 Scott Wav. I. ii. 17 The cool and procrastinating alembic of Dyer's Weekly Letter. 1856 G. Brimley Ess. 229 Passed through the alembic of a great poet's imagination.
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#71458
05/27/2002 6:16 PM
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296 |
If alembic is viewed as a distillation, then what kind of distillation do we have here from tswum's paste:
The cool and procrastinating alembic of Dyer's Weekly Letter. ??
A cool distillation seems heady and controlled, but procrastinating? To or for whom? Was Dyer's letter of such interest and so highly distilled that it caused readers to procrastinate their ordinary duties while reading Dyer instead?
Hating to miss the obvious,
WW
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#71459
05/27/2002 7:18 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
I still think the use quoted by wordsmith is pretentiously overwritten balderdash.
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#71460
05/27/2002 8:30 PM
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
but you can distill by freezing.. that how apple jack was made. ferment cider, and slowly freeze it.. the water freezes, the alcohol remains liquid.. but you have to go it slowly.. slow, distilling.. waiting for the alcohol to seperate its self out..
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#71461
05/28/2002 12:21 AM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 60
journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 60 |
If the writer meant a "brew" of wishes, etc. the use of the word would be apt. Maybe she meant "lambic."
: )
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