Dive in, splash around, skim and dip and spout about the latest quotations, metaphors, words and, of course, triologisms. You’ll feel better for it!
Poems for my family 001 – Yeats – The Cloths of Heaven
The first time I heard this poem was when my mother recited it to my step-father in the kitchen. She had tears in her eyes but I wasn't sure it was...
Up hill and down dale
Gavin Maxwell chose to live in a remote house on a remote island in Scotland. Here he describes the extraordinary efforts made by the local postman...
Of pens and pencils
Listening time: under 3 minutes. This is a charming account of negotiating communist bureaucracy at the height of the Cold War. John Steinbeck and...
Life and Fate – documentary
Stumbled across this excellent documentary by Priscilla Pizzato, Life and Fate by Vasili Grossman (in French, with English subtitles) on the...
Missing homework
Here Steinbeck suffers a bout of exam nerves before being bombarded with highly intellectual questions from his counterparts in the Soviet Union,...
My kind of letter
Love receiving 'real' letters, and so was thrilled to find this beautiful envelope in the letter box, apparently made from an old map. I've come...
A quote to note
Drawing on thousands of sparkling, moving and inspiring quotations amassed during decades of attentive reading. To delight your mind and spirit and improve your presentations beyond belief.
Always get a receipt
Rory Stewart walked the length of Hadrian's Wall, staying at the homes of strangers on the way. Here he mentions one descended from a Victorian who...
One wrong move
Babur is one of my favourite dogs, full of character and occasionally stubborn and ornery. Here his new master, Rory Stewart, accidentally hits him...
War in all its gory
Steinbeck met a number of people in the Soviet Union who had survived the worst depredations of the Second World War, including the battle for...
An insolence of goats
Reading Gavin Maxwell's lively description of a kitchen takeover by goats makes me wonder how we can call them collectively by a term so bland as...
Metaphorically speaking
More marvelous metaphors on Mondays … Monday, metaphor day.
Breathing on a crystal
A limpid simile to describe a lovely human being. Maggie is simple and direct, but her innate charm and beauty cause considerable complexity of...
Looking good
The poor old boy, pallid and wan, in stark and merciless juxtaposition to the ruddy picture of health and well-being, Sir James. 'Skinned over for...
Mental shallows
A splendid simile for a shallow-minded person, and I loved the 'nethermost sediment', in which murk turbid calculations are taking place as to...
Great grassy hills
A beautiful description of a large-hearted calming character, who has a benign influence on those around him. We need more Cadwalladers around,...
Triologisms
Bringing you pithy, evocative imagery in the form of three-legged microcosms of meaning. Updated on Tuesdays … Tuesday, triologism day! You’ll never see this day of the week in the same way again.
Worm-like creature
Balint is one of the most engaging characters in Banffy's splendid trilogy of novels covering the closing decades of the Austro-Hungarian empire, as...
Plum-coloured distances
A splendid colour wash of distance, along with that enamelled sea and the scrolls of snow. 'Beyond the islands was the shining enamelled sea, and...
Hedgehog-like attorney
This is from an excellent trilogy by the Hungarian writer Miklos Banffy, chronicling the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and the role of...
Grey-mantled scavengers
A powerful image, the scavenger squad bare-picking the bones of dead lambs. I have noticed that crows, normally black as pitch, tend to have grey...
Tide-swayed fronds
An otter's eye view of the world, with its human connections and its human-free watery paradise. Maxwell's classic account of his relationship with...
Topaz-coloured eyes
Adrienne is far the most interesting female character in this monumental trilogy, and there is great finesse in the author's description of her...
Words
Sharing words that sparkle, appeal, intrigue or otherwise grab me, including in other languages. And adoring alliteration, words are added on Wednesdays… Wednesday, word day. See you back here then.
Ullage of sunflower
Something about this word that you can roll around the mouth like a good swig of wine or cognac, the removal of which would result in its ullage in...
Cragfast
Stuck? In a tight corner? No going forward ... or back? Call yourself Cragfast. A sheep cornered on a crag, to starve in the absence of rescue....
Gummocks
This glorious word being no longer current, I invite you to revive it the next time someone does something daft or useless. Perhaps combine it...
A pippin but not an apple
I always knew the word pippin to be a type of apple, but then came across a reference to 'the expression of his pippin face'. According to the OED,...
Trim, trig and tickety-boo
Came across the upright word 'trig' in another of Arthur Ransome's charming children's adventure stories, Winter Holiday, which I read on suitably...
Szkupcsina
This intriguing word turned up in Miklos Banffy's superb Transylvanian Trilogy, tracing the decline of the Hungarian aristocracy in the years up to...
I find it moving that no literary text is utterly original, no literary text is completely unique, that it stems from previous texts, built on quotations and misquotations, on the vocabularies fashioned by others and transformed through imagination and use. Writers must find consolation in the fact that there is no very first story and no last one. Our literature reaches further back than the beginnings of our memory permits us, and further into the future than our imagination allows us to conceive, but that must be the only barrier.
Source: Alberto Manguel, The City of Words, CBC Massey Lecture Series (Toronto: Anansi Press, 2007), p. 139
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