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my dear Mr Bingley, made available to me me, a small paragraph from Northanger Abbey, (chapter 20) and what a jem it was!
here for your enjoyment--
A sudden scud of rain, driving full in her face, made it impossible for her to observe anything further, and fixed all her thoughts on the welfare of her new straw bonnet; and she was actually under the abbey walls, was springing, with Henry's assistance, from the arriage, was beneath the shelter of the old porch, and had even passed on to the hall, where her friend and the general were waiting to welcome her, without feeling one awful foreboding of future misery to herself, or one moment's suspicion of any past scenes of horror being acted within the solemn edifice. The breeze had not seemed to waft the sighs of the murderer to her; it had wafted nothing worse than a thick mizzling rain; and having given a good shake to her habit, she was ready to be shown into the common drawing-room, and capable of considering where she was.
what wonderfull words are crammed into this small paragraph!
some like habit-- we have fallen out of habit, and almost never use it to describe clothes except when talking about a nun's habit.
and scud.. i know, its a yart, but a old one.. and it was really only touch upon when we did scuttle.
and mizzling.. crossing threads, some one started a post about rain words, but i like the rain, especially since its raining today, and we've had a long dry spell, and can use all the rain that comes this way.. but today is hardly rainy.. its is a soft day.. the air is all soggy and soft.. and what moisture the is is mizzling.. misty, drizzle, miserly rain!
do you have favorite paragraphs,one that jump out and grab you, or the at shine and sparkle like polished jems, that your return to, to take pleasure in them? are they filled with wonderful, simple words.. that provide a feast for you?
will you share them?
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Pooh-Bah
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That's a good one, but needs some thought. Didn't want to leave you hanging with such a good question. I'll have a think.....I feel there's something in Dorothy Sayers' "Nine Taylors".
dxb
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Possibly you were thinking of:
One after another, the bells jangled into silence. Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity and Batty Thomas lowered their shouting mouths and were at peace, and in their sudden stillness, Tailor Paul tolled out the Nine Tailors for two souls passed in the night. The notes of the organ rose solemnly.
Wimsey crept down from the tower. Into the ringing chamber, where old Hezekiah still stood to his bell, streamed light and sound from the crowded church. The Rector's voice, musical and small, came floating up, past the wings of the floating cherubim:
"Lighten our darkness ..."
That is one of my favorite books and my absolute all-time top mystery novel. Thanks for mentioning it. Now, your go.
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Before dxb lured me aside by an irresistable allusion, I was about to offer this favorite of mine, from the opening chapter of Justine, the first book of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartette.
These are the memories which possess the writer, not the lover, and which live on perpetually. One can return to them time and time again in memory, or use them as a fund upon which to build the part of one's life which is writing. One can debauch them with words, but one cannot spoil them. In this context too, I recover another such moment, lying beside a sleeping woman in a cheap room near the mosque. In that early spring dawn, with its dense dew, sketched upon the silence which engulfs a whole city before the birds awaken it, I caught the sweet voice of the blind muezzin from the mosque reciting the Ebed -- a voice hanging like a hair in the palm-cooled upper airs of Alexandria. "I praise the perfection of God, the Forever existing" (this repeated thrice, ever more slowly, in a high sweet register). "The perfection of God, the Desired, the Existing, the Single, the Supreme: the perfection of God, the One, the Sole: the perfection of Him who taketh unto himself no male or female partner, nor any like Him, not any that is disobedient, not any deputy, equal or offspring. His perfection be extolled."
The great prayer wound its way into my sleepy consciousness like a serpent, coil after shining coil of words -- the voice of the muezzin sinking from register to register of gravity -- until the whole morning seemed dense with its marvellous healing powers, the intimations of a grace undeserved and unexpected, impregnating that shabby room where Melissa lay, breathing as lightly as a gull, rocked upon the oceanic splendour of a language she would never know.
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the intimations of a grace undeserved and unexpected, impregnating that shabby room where Melissa lay, breathing as lightly as a gull, rocked upon the oceanic splendour of a language she would never know
Delicious Boby - years since I read that, and that brings back a taste for a timely revisit - thank you for that, and for this HoT topic, Helen
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enthusiast
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Here is Henry David Thoreau on the coming of spring, in Walden, one of those books you don't just read, but live with for a lifetime:
At length the sun's rays have attained the right angle, and warm winds blow up mist and rain and melt the snowbanks, and the sun, dispersing the mist, smiles on a checkered landscape of russet and white smoking with incense, through which the traveller picks his way from islet to islet, cheered by the music of a thousand tinkling rills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of winter which they are bearing off.
Ere long, not only on these banks, but on every hill and plain and in every hollow, the frost comes out of the ground like a dormant quadruped from its burrow, and seeks the sea with music, or migrates to other climes in clouds. Thaw with his gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other but breaks in pieces.
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For me it would have to be passages out of Joseph Conrad and Ray Bradbury...such luscious language each! Yet two distinctive styles.  The Only WO'N!
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A monumental 4 paragraphs -- the meat of the Declaration of Independence. To those of our non-USn brothers and sisters who have never read this, or read it only as a required piece in school, I recommend attention to the language of it, laying aside the history and politics.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among thse are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becones destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
[follows the bill of particulars]
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free People.
Nor have We been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
[conclusion]
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Sorry, Max. I'll eschew the revolutionary color for large pieces in future.
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One more and I'm done. The rest of y'all have to get to work.
I had thought of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, which is only a single paragraph and a masterpiece of style and brevity. But I think I'd rather contribute another, less well-known masterpiece.
Executive Mansion, Washington, November 21, 1864
Mrs. Bixby, Boston, Massachusetts:
Dear Madam: I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours very sincerely and respectfully,
Abraham Lincoln
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Pooh-Bah
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Byb, you are exactly right. I sat down with book in front of me and there you were already! A real coincidence though is that I started to look at the Alexandria Quartet last night as I thought there was something of Lawrence Durrell's itching at me. Couldn't find it - it may have been in the Avignon series.
I feel the way you do about The Nine Tailors - the best of the best.
dxb
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This from Common Sense, Thomas Paine: SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer! Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others. For the full text click here: http://earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/milestones/commonsense/text.htmlThe Only WO'N!
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Well, dxb, now you have a challenge -- give us another piece from The Nine Tailors. There's certainly more than one good paragraph in it. I wait with much interest to see what you will choose.
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Pooh-Bah
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Have to give me a little time Byb. Finding the book on the table, a friend of my wife's has borrowed it! At least she showed good taste.
Meanwhile, here's another helping of Lawrence Durrell:
“Swerving down those long dusty roads among the olive groves, down the shivering galleries of green leaf I came, diving from penumbra to penumbra of shadow, feeling that icy contrast of sunblaze and darkness under the ruffling planes, plunging like a river trout in rapids from one pool of shadows to the next, the shadows almost icy in comparison with the outer sunshine and hard metalled blue sky. So to come at last upon Valence where the shift of accent begins: the cuisine veers from cream to olive oil and spices in the more austere dietary of the south, with the first olives and mulberries and the tragic splash of flowering Judas, the brilliant violet brushstroke of unique Judas. Here, like the signature at the end of a score, the steady orchestral drizzle of cicadas: such strange sybilline music and such an exceptional biography, so scant of living time, with so long underground in the dark earth before rising into the light! Anisette everywhere declared itself as the ideal accompaniment for the evening meditations of the players of boules; no village square in summer was without the clickety-click of the little steel balls, no shady village without its boulistes ……”
Lawrence Durrell
“Caesar’s Vast Ghost – Aspects of Provence”
1990
I am fond of this description because on first reading it there was an instant feeling of recognition and nostalgic longing – back came the memory of the light and shade, the burnt umber colours, the tiny villages, the cicadas, the smells…. Even the comparison with the gliding trout brought back an image from a French film; probably it was “Un homme et une femme”. In the film the man makes a car journey by night, I think, unfortunately, the reverse way round, to Paris from the midi. Much of it is shot from above through trees etc and there is exactly that sense of sliding in and out of sight, moving purposefully onward. (Both man and trout driven by the same instinct, now I think of it).
A personal view, as I have no literary qualifications (maybe pretensions!). It strikes me that Durrell does not usually choose to use the spareness of writing, using the exact minimum of words needed to convey images and emotions, of some of the other writers that grace this thread. In his writing, though not so noticeable in the sample above, he frequently spends words prodigiously, seemingly for the love of them, the feel and taste of them in the mind and the mouth. Byb's example earlier in the thread shows some of this. Is this the influence of Provence upon his writing? I love it.
dxb
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Max:
With all due respect: No. One person had a unique opportunity to keep the War for American Independence from happening, and that was our old friend George 3. He personally rejected petitions sent to him from the colonies, maintaining that he was the king and they were his subjects and he would decide what was best for them. His imperial nature prevented any hope of compromise and so polarized his ministers versus the colonists that there was no hope of a reconciliation.
One of the best treatments of this is actually in a relatively new roman a clef by Jeff Shaara called RISE TO REBELLION. I recommend it highly. the approach of the two Shaaras to history is vastly entertaining and an excellent teaching method.
TEd
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RISE TO REBELLION
Then there's The Two Georges : The Novel of an Alternate America by Richard Dreyfuss and Harry Turtledove. It takes place in an America many years after George Washington and George Ay-yi-yi came to an agreement about the colonists gripes and the Rebellion never happened.
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Max, as I recall what I have read about Geo III and his condtion, whatever it was, he was quite sane at the time of the American Revolution and for some time after. It was not until later, that he first had a spell and was found incompetent. He recovered from that, and I think it was not until after the turn of the century that he went permanently bonkers, necessitating the Regency. So TEd's point is very well taken (in fact, I was going to post something like it myself). At the crucial period, before 1776, Geo was quite sane. Part of his problem was his upbringing. I read somewhere that his mother was always telling him, "Georgie, be a man!" This was one reason why he was so intractable with the colonists. And he had a sense of his position in history and had no intention of presiding over the start of the dissolution of the Empire.
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"And what is your faith, exactly, Mr. Switters? What do you believe in?"
"I try not to believe. I'm on the run from the Killer B's. B for Belief. B for Belonging. Listen to the swarm that Be-lief and Be-longing have Be-got. B-boundaries. B-borderlines. B-blood. B-bonds. B-blood B-brother. B-bloodlust. B-bloodbath. B-bloody B-bloody. B-bang B-bang. B-boom B-boom. B-blast. B-bludgeon. B-batter. B-blow up. B-bomb. B-butcher. B-break. B-blindside. B-bushwhack. Be-head. B-blackball. Be-tray. B-bullets. B-blades. B-booby traps. B-bazookas. B-bayonets. B-brute force. B-barbarism. B-babylon. B-babel. Be-elzebub. Be-etlejuice. B-burocracy. B-bagpipes. B-beanie B-babies."
"Beanie Babies? The kiddie stuffed toys?"
"Uh, sorry, that just slipped in. And, obviously, there're good things that begin with B, too. Bee-r, for example. B-biscuits. The Be-atles. B-Broadway. B-beinas."
"Well, to be-labor my apiarian analogy: the honey that's dipped from that busy hive can be sweet and nourishing, or it can be halucinogenic and deadly. All too frequently, the latter is confused with the former. Dip with caution. Reader be-ware."
Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates - Tom Robbins
Hey, Mr. Milo! When are you going to write your cheap book review on this novel?
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I want to particularly stress the last paragraph as far as the distillation of language is concerned. But to print it out of context without the others would seem to be an injustice:
William Faulkner: Nobel Prize Speech
Stockholm, Sweden
December 10, 1950
.....I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work--a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand where I am standing.
..... Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.
..... Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
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