by beatriceotto | Sep 1, 2017 | metaphors, you got mail
When was the last time you received – or wrote – an 18 page letter? I think I have managed to write one or two in my life and that’s even allowing for my quite large handwriting. What was in this letter, completely covered in a tall, straight hand...
by beatriceotto | Mar 14, 2017 | triologisms
Something warming in this, until you see the context. I recall ‘brick-coloured sunsets’ tinted by a haze of pollution in Shanghai. And note the additional surprising triologism: water-melon emptiness. ‘Nowhere, never, have I felt with such force...
by beatriceotto | Feb 28, 2017 | triologisms
‘On the island of Sevan, which is conspicuous for two most dignified architectural monuments that date back to the seventh century, as well as for the mud huts of flea-bitten hermits only recently passed away…’ Source: Osip Mandelstam, Journey to...
by beatriceotto | Feb 16, 2017 | triologisms
Musty pink makes me think of an old breed of faded rose, or a soft-worn damask, or one of the thatched houses I saw in a village near Liverpool earlier this week. Source: Osip Mandelstam, Journey to Armenia (London: Notting Hill Editions, 2011), p....
by beatriceotto | Feb 16, 2017 | triologisms
Trying to imagine a raspberry-grey boulevard, and can only think of the grey of the road itself combined with a pink wash from a shaft of setting sun. Other colour related triologisms to follow. ‘Pissarro’s raspberry-grey boulevards, flowing like the...
by beatriceotto | Feb 13, 2017 | metaphors
An arresting image for catastrophe – an omelette. Too prosaic? Smashing eggs can certainly make a hell of a mess, but I keep questioning this, somehow an omelette doesn’t equate to ‘catastrophe’. But nor can I forget it. ‘The omelette of catastrophe’ Source: Osip...
by beatriceotto | Feb 13, 2017 | metaphors
I loved this one. Something about Tatar children bathing horses in Alushta that conveys a secure, happy world and an activity repeated over generations. I hope I can be calm like those Tatar children. And how did the idea come to Mandelstam? Did he see these...
by beatriceotto | Feb 13, 2017 | metaphors
Had to read this one a couple of times – it’s imaginative and convoluted. First the image of ‘the body heat of your vision’ and then that tumbling phrase, ‘singing a serenade in a fur coat behind a double set of windows’. I hope it never happens to you. ‘Standing...
by beatriceotto | Feb 13, 2017 | metaphors
Milky quietude sounds like something to be welcomed, whereas a curdling whey of silence is to be escaped. I like this double latte metaphor, turning over two sides of quietness. ‘A milky quietude ensued. The whey of silence curdled.’ Source: Osip Mandelstam, Journey...
