MR's omnibus: To my suggestion
regarding "empty barrow," Jansy replied: "Trundling perhaps?" Jansy,
I'm not sure where you are going with that question, but it did send me to
Webster's to see about trundling...
JM: I never looked up "trundling" in a
dictionary! I thought I knew already what it meant! Sorry.
I had visualized the motion of "pushing forward something
round" ( because "barrow" became "barrel" in my dreamlife. In Rio it is
very common to find bar-attendants rolling metal beer-barrels to cope
with the demand of something cool), or pushing a gardening cart with a
spade inside.
Matt, my comment was directed to a clumsy image, something I
never encountered in VN's images, associations or metaphors, as it would happen
with "rolling a portable grave" ( trundling a barrow...)
I have been planning to mention Winter and Summer but never have
enough time to find the correct quotes ( I may search for them later on, if
necessary)
(a) The Red Admiral in KQK is first sighted in the Summer and the
deaths take place sometime around Winter;
(b) The Waxwing, in PF, is first seen during the Summer (with azure
windowpane and grass) and taken up again in the Winter ( the transition
from grass to snowy landscape takes place in the first lines already),
although poem and action occur later, again during the Summer. I
always have the impression that those who write on PF ignore the transition from
Summer into Winter and into Summer again ( a movie resource to indicate the
passage of time, too!).
I have two examples ( in my vague memory) where VN makes Summer and Winter
succeed each other almost instanteneously: at the beginning of ADA we have a
theatrical performance with Marina and the Baron and various inversions of
roles and inside/out events: one of these entails a quick seasonal change
into cold winter.
In "Transparent Things" I saw the same at least
once: blending seasons and night and day ( I just received
CHW's fascinating posting on "Nattodag" )
A while back Stan K-B gleefully corrected
my interpretation on "testimony" ( witness, a third opinion as it
occurs with a "Minerva vote"). I wanted to quote, in return, a quip
by Samuel Butler:
" It has, I believe, been often remarked, that a hen is
only an egg's way of making another egg"
( that I finally copied from a heavy tome) but while trying first to get it
through the "google", I discovered that references and epigrams
about "egg and chicken" are as old as Plutarch. So, I'm now condemned
to unscramble this omelette or abandon balls, eggs and
testes.
But...while googling biblical "eggs" I got a bonus I'm
unable to profit from, but which I can still share with the experts on
the subject of translations and poetry:
There is another example of the literature that missed
poetry for centuries - I mean the Old Slavonic. Originally it was a kind
of
"translational" literature introduced by St.Cyrill & Methodius in
nineth century. The policy of literal translation led to prosaic versions
of
poetic texts, so even centuries later when the original Slavonic works
appeared in abundance only prose was written down. Poetry , i.e. folk
songs,
remained oral. Andre S. Desnitsky, Ph.D./(Oriental Institute of the Russian
Academy of Sciences;Bible Society in Russia)